US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has threatened to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, which he denigrated as a “disgraced country.”

In a social media post on Saturday November 1, he declared: “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”

“Yes sir,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to his post. “The Department of War is preparing for action.”

Why? Ostensibly to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities” against “our CHERISHED Christians.” For over two months, the US right wing has been peddling a conspiracy about a “genocide” against Christians in Nigeria.

Championing this false claim, Senator Ted Cruz has proposed the so-called “Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act” to use “powerful sanctions and other tools” against Nigerian officials he accuses of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist jihadists.”

Myth of Christian genocide

Facts, however, contradict this accusation. The majority of people killed by the Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are Muslims, simply because they make up the majority in the northern region these Islamist insurgencies are ravaging.

For the same demographic reasons, Muslims are also the majority victims of bandits who kill, loot, and kidnap in the north-west region, where the state is struggling to enforce the rule of law.

In the central region, Christian victims of violence are in the majority, not because of their religious identity but because of their occupation: farming.

Amid intensifying competition over depleting land and water due to climate change, raids on farmlands by mobile herders, groups of whom are armed, are a serious problem in several African countries suffering desertification.

Ninety per cent of these herders are Muslims, while in this region of Nigeria, farmers are predominantly Christian. But the violence is over resources, not faith. There is no evidence of a systematic and large-scale, religiously motivated targeting of Christians in Nigeria, where they are almost equal to Muslims in population.

“While Christians make up roughly 50 per cent of the population, violence in which Christians have been specifically targeted in relation to their religious identity accounts for only 5 per cent of reported civilian targeting events,” the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reported in mid-2022.

Trump’s own envoy for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, had pointed out at a summit last month in Italy to discuss counter-terrorism in west Africa that Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians. Facts notwithstanding, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” Trump insisted.

“Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” he claimed, announcing on Friday October 31 his decision to designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern” for systematic violation of religious freedoms.

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it recognise government efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and belief,” replied Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim married to a Christian pastor.

A secular suffering

Under his secular regime, Christians, Muslims and non-believers have all suffered alike, from hunger, unaffordability, unemployment, etc, as a consequence of his aggressive implementation of the IMF-World Bank prescribed reforms.

This crisis has enhanced the fertility of the ground for terror groups, bandits and other criminal gangs to harvest more recruits, especially in the hinterlands and remote areas the state is struggling to police.

While struggling to restore security in these regions, Tinubu tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to lead the Nigerian military into a war with neighbouring Niger at the behest of US ally France after its neocolonial puppet regime in Niger was ousted in mid-2023.

A year later, he unleashed his security forces on the domestic front to crush the “hunger protests” demanding a reversal of the IMF-World Bank prescribed liberalisation, killing at least two dozen people. Another 1,200 protesters were arrested, many of whom were tortured in custody. Several, including minors, faced charges of treason.

Later in November, allegations of treason were levelled against Tinubu himself when the CIA objected to the release of the unredacted files of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into Tinubu in the early 1990s. Accused of laundering money for a major heroin racket in Chicago at the time, Tinubu entered into a plea bargain to avoid a trial, forfeiting US$460,000 to US authorities.

Tinubu’s loyalty to the West, unrewarded

In response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the release of unredacted files of the investigation, “We oppose the full… release of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records,” the DEA insisted. “While Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”

Reminding that its activities are “carried out through clandestine means, and therefore they must remain secret,” the CIA objected to full release as it could “cause damage to US national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu.”

“The CIA effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s sitting president is an active CIA asset,” remarked David Hundeyin, author of the documentary “Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate.”

From his alleged contribution to US intelligence, his readiness to hurl Nigeria into war with a neighbour for France, his obedient implementation of IMF-World Bank diktats, and ruthless crushing of protests against it — Tinubu has time and again demonstrated his loyalty to the West.

But Trump is not placated. Ordering the Department of War to prepare for military action, Trump doubled down, adding that both air strikes and boots on the ground were open options.

Grovelling again

“Nigeria is [the] US’s partner in the global fight against terrorism,” said Tinubu’s spokesperson, Daniel Bwala. “We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” he grovelled. “We do not see [Trump’s threat] in the literal sense… We know that Donald Trump has his own style of communication.” It was, he suggested, Trump’s way to “force a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity.”

But he is confident that when Tinubu and Trump meet, “there will be better outcomes.” Will these “outcomes” from the suggested meeting include Tinubu’s walking back on his refusal to accept foreign nationals deported by the US? Will he throw open Nigeria’s vast critical mineral deposits for US extraction, which the Establishment think tank, Brookings Institution, deems “a win-win policy”?

This article appeared at peoplesdispatch.org.