The president of the United States, Donald Trump, assured that defending Christians is the reason for the attacks that the Armed Forces of his country will carry out this December 25 against targets of the Islamic State (IS) in Nigeria.
Trump announced the bombing through a message on his social networks on Christmas Day and hours later the event was confirmed by the Nigerian government, which also admitted its participation in the event, according to reports from EFE.
The attack was carried out by the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Sokoto State, specifically in the Bauni forest, in the Tangaza area.
The attack targets “were being used as concentration and preparation bases by foreign elements of the IS that were infiltrating into Nigeria from the Sahel region,” said a statement issued by the African nation’s Ministry of Information.
EFE It also states that the operation was carried out “after the explicit approval of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and that more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles were fired from a US Navy ship deployed in the Gulf of Guinea.
According to Trump, terrorist groups operating in the region have been committing mass murders against Christians, Nigeria’s second largest religious affiliation. “Previously, I warned these terrorists that if they did not stop the massacre of Christians, all hell would break loose, and tonight there was,” he wrote in his social media post.
Trump and Christians in Nigeria
For months now, the Trump administration has been focusing its eyes and actions on the situation of Christians in Nigeria, taking a position that for many international analysts is very biased within the situation of violence that the African country faces.
In November, the United States declared Nigeria a “Nation of Special Concern,” a category that suggests that it believes the nation has incurred or tolerated “systematic, ongoing, and serious violations of religious freedom,” all under the International Religious Freedom Act.
An accusation that was rejected by the Nigerian government, whose president Bola Tinubu assured that “the characterization of Nigeria as intolerant of religion does not reflect our national reality,” he says. cnn.
On December 3, the United States announced that it will prohibit entry into the country of those responsible for crimes of violence and mass murders against Christians in Nigeria.
Furthermore, since then Trump ordered the Department of Defense to be ready for the possibility of actions against Islamic terrorists in that nation, although all of the president’s accusations have lacked real and reliable data.
Violence in Nigeria
The serious situation of violence experienced in Nigeria is a reality in recent years and is generated by various factors ranging from religious motivations to local disputes between farmers over access to natural resources.
In areas like the northwest of the country, violence is largely in the hands of criminal groups that, together with “jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State, have created a hybrid threat of crime and terrorism,” according to an analysis by cnn.
In a population of more than 230 million, Christians and Muslims are the largest religious groups in the country and both report attacks equally.
The American network cites the crisis monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, whose data record that “of the more than 20,400 civilians killed in attacks between January 2020 and September 2025, 317 deaths corresponded to attacks against Christians, while 417 were the result of attacks against Muslims.”
Data like these call into question Trump’s position and the relevance of the attack on December 25 based on the defense of a single sector of a population generally mired in violence.
Cedric Leighton retired colonel of the United States Air Force declared to cnn that this week’s actions may “disrupt ISIS operations in the short term, but the underlying issues surrounding the violence in Nigeria are extremely complex.”
“Most of these attacks need to be part of a broader campaign, and that’s what we’re not seeing here,” he said.
