By Ogbeni Olawale Dawodu
US President Donald Trump has said American military strikes in Nigeria helped stop the mass killing of Christians by Islamic State-linked militants, and vowed that Washington would continue targeting terrorist groups operating in the country.
Speaking at an event in Washington on Friday, Trump defended his administration’s decision to authorise military operations against fighters affiliated with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), saying the strikes had significantly reduced attacks on Christian communities.
“As you know, we recently struck Nigeria and largely ended the slaughter of great Christian populations,” Trump said. “They have a great Christian population. They were being butchered—thousands and thousands of people were being killed, children, women, old people, just being slaughtered, hacked to death.”
He said the operation had sent a strong warning to the militants.
“They know that if they go further, the attack will be far greater and that they don’t want to really get involved anymore so much,” he said.
Trump claimed US forces had eliminated several senior commanders of the terrorist group during the strikes, drawing a comparison with America’s military operations against Iran.
“We hit them very hard. We knocked out their leader. We knocked out their second leader and their third leader,” he said.
Reaffirming his administration’s commitment to combating religious persecution globally, Trump said: “I’m saving Christians throughout the world, even though we are not in those various countries where you read about this.”
He added that the United States would continue pursuing terrorist groups wherever they operate, describing the country’s arsenal as “the greatest weapons on earth” deployed to prevent attacks on civilians.
Trump’s remarks come amid months of growing security cooperation between Washington and Abuja in the fight against extremist groups in Nigeria, with the US increasing intelligence-sharing and military support for Nigerian forces as part of broader counterterrorism efforts targeting ISWAP and other jihadist factions.
Nigeria has battled a complex insurgency for more than a decade involving Boko Haram, ISWAP and other armed groups responsible for thousands of deaths, mass displacement, kidnappings and attacks on civilians across the northeast and parts of the northwest.
While Trump has repeatedly highlighted the plight of Christians in Nigeria and accused extremist groups of targeting them on account of their faith, Nigerian authorities and independent security analysts maintain that the conflict affects both Christians and Muslims, driven by insurgency, banditry, communal violence and competition over land and resources.
Human rights organisations have documented attacks on churches, Christian communities and clergy, even as Muslim communities have also suffered deadly assaults, abductions and displacement at the hands of insurgents and criminal gangs.
