{"id":4489,"date":"2025-12-19T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/trump-close-to-nigeria-security-pact-to-stop-christian-persecution\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T05:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:22:14","slug":"trump-close-to-nigeria-security-pact-to-stop-christian-persecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/trump-close-to-nigeria-security-pact-to-stop-christian-persecution\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump \u2018close to Nigeria security pact to stop Christian persecution\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Ben Farmer<\/em><\/p>\n

America is close to sealing a security pact with Nigeria after US President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops \u201cguns a-blazing\u201d to stop the persecution of Christians.<\/p>\n

A delegation of US congressmen who toured the country say Washington is nearing an agreement, which is expected to include intelligence sharing and training for Nigeria\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump in November threatened military action after saying Christianity faced an \u201cexistential threat\u201d from attacks by Muslim militants in the West African nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers,\u201d he said at the time.
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to allow that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

His accusation was rejected by the Nigerian government, which accused him of over-simplifying the country\u2019s deep-rooted security woes to fire up his conservative evangelical base.<\/p>\n

Security experts say Nigeria is beset by instability, banditry and long-running insurgencies that strike Christians and Muslims alike.<\/p>\n

However, Mr Trump\u2019s intervention was welcomed by Church leaders in Nigeria, who say Christians are being killed for their faith and have been abandoned by the central government.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump dispatched a fact-finding mission led by Republican Congressman Riley Moore to report back to Washington.<\/p>\n

Mr Moore said this week that he believed the US was \u201cclose to a strategic security framework\u201d.<\/p>\n

Any defence cooperation is expected to include intelligence sharing, with the Pentagon potentially training Nigerian troops. Nigeria also hopes to secure fast-tracked military equipment deals and access to surplus US kit.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump\u2019s comments, combined with a spate of high-profile attacks and mass kidnappings, have heaped pressure on the leadership of Africa\u2019s most populous nation.<\/p>\n

President Bola Tinubu has declared a nationwide emergency and said the government will recruit 20,000 additional police officers, raising the total to 50,000.<\/p>\n

The nation of around 240 million people is roughly 56 per cent Muslim and 43 per cent Christian. The north is predominantly Muslim and the south largely Christian, although the faiths often live side by side across the country.<\/p>\n

Nigeria is racked by overlapping security crises. In the north-east, the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency became notorious for the 2014 mass kidnapping of schoolgirls and has killed thousands of civilians.<\/p>\n

Long-standing banditry and organised criminality also plague much of the country.<\/p>\n

But it is the Middle Belt \u2014 where the Church says Christian farmers are under attack from predominantly Muslim Fulani herders \u2014 that has become the focus of American concern.<\/p>\n

Mr Moore said his report to Mr Trump would \u201coutline a path forward to work with the Nigerian government in a coordinated and cooperative manner to end the slaughter of innocent Christians in the Middle Belt and stop the ongoing terrorist threat in the north-east\u201d.<\/p>\n

Analysts say the Middle Belt violence is largely driven by competition for land and resources, though religious identity is often drawn in.<\/p>\n

Cheta Nwanze, lead partner at Lagos-based risk advisory firm SBM Intelligence, said: \u201cNigeria is experiencing not merely a security crisis but a fundamental crisis of state legitimacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver 10,000 people have been killed by armed groups in the last two years alone, displacing hundreds of thousands of farmers and creating a humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarge swathes of territory have become ungoverned spaces where armed groups collect taxes, control roads and conduct kidnappings with little interference.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Farmer America is close to sealing a security pact with Nigeria after US President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops \u201cguns a-blazing\u201d to stop the persecution of Christians. A delegation of US congressmen who toured the country say Washington is nearing an agreement, which is expected to include intelligence sharing and training<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4492,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489\/revisions\/4492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}