Photo File: President Donald Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a fresh warning to Nigeria, saying he would “target” the country if its government “continues to allow the killing of Christians.”

In a video posted on Truth Social, Mr. Trump vowed to “do things to Nigeria that Nigeria is not going to be happy about,” adding that he would “go into that now-disgraced country guns-a-blazing.”

The White House’s focus on the issue did not arise suddenly. For months, campaigners and politicians in Washington have accused Islamist militants in Nigeria of systematically targeting Christians.

However, a BBC investigation found that some of the data used to support these claims are difficult to verify.

In September, television host and comedian Bill Maher intensified the debate by calling the situation a “genocide.” Referring to the Boko Haram militant group, he claimed the group had “killed over 100,000 since 2009” and “burned 18,000 churches.” Similar figures have spread widely on social media.

The Nigerian government has dismissed these assertions as “a gross misrepresentation of reality.” While acknowledging that the country faces deadly violence, officials insisted that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology, Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.”

Independent groups monitoring political violence in Nigeria report far lower numbers of Christian victims and say most people killed by jihadist groups are Muslims.

Nigerian security analyst Christian Ani noted that although Christians have been targeted in some attacks, these incidents are part of a broader campaign of terror rather than a deliberate strategy to persecute Christians specifically.

Nigeria continues to grapple with multiple security crises across different regions, not limited to jihadist violence, each driven by its own complex causes.

The nation’s 220 million citizens are roughly evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with Muslims forming the majority in the north the region where most attacks occur.