We Need To Talk About The Nigerian Christian Genocide

When the president announced that we might soon be taking “sweet” military action inside Nigeria, as he put it — in addition to cutting off all foreign aid to the country — he raised a lot of very urgent questions that need to be answered. The first question, of course, is what exactly this “sweet” military action will look like. Nigeria doesn’t have much in the way of anti-air technology, nor is its military capable of defeating LSU’s football team, much less the U.S. Army. So the options are pretty much limitless on this front — especially if you’re not a fan of the mercy rule or playing remotely fair. We could film the next Top Gun movie over West Africa in the next few weeks if we wanted to. And whatever you think of those movies, no serious person contests the fact that they featured some pretty sweet scenes.

The other important question that’s raised by Trump’s remarks is: Why are we sending any foreign aid to Nigeria to begin with? Why is there any foreign aid to suspend? When I asked that question yesterday, I genuinely had no idea what the answer was. I was aware of statistics showing that, since 2021, we’ve been sending roughly a billion dollars — yes, a billion dollars — every single year to Nigeria. And for the decade before that, we were giving them a half-billion dollars every year. Most of that money is supposedly earmarked for “humanitarian” and “economic” purposes.

And yet, if you look at the current state of Nigeria, it’s not doing so well, despite receiving all of that money from your checking account. It turns out that, according to the latest estimates from the United Nations Development Program, “63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multidimensionally poor.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Sixty-three percent of Nigerians are “multidimensionally poor.” This is not, despite what you may think, a situation where Nigerians are so poor that they’ve entered another dimension. Apparently, according to the United Nations, being “multidimensionally poor” means that, in addition to having no money, you also have poor health, poor education, poor living standards, poor sanitation, poor housing, and poor access to electricity. In other words, being “multidimensionally poor” means you’re poor. And apparently, it also means that you’re entitled to billions of dollars from American taxpayers.

And that’s not all they’ve been receiving. Whether they exist in this dimension or not, Nigerians have also been receiving a very different kind of aid from the United States. It’s not all “humanitarian aid.” They’ve also been receiving very expensive planes.

In 2017, the first Trump administration sold a dozen A-29 “Super Tucano” aircraft to Nigeria for $600 million, on the theory that they’d be useful in the Nigerian government’s fight against Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group. These “Super Tucanos” are turboprop aircraft that are mainly used for close-air support.

At the time, the Trump administration thought it would be a good idea to equip Nigeria’s air force with these fighters because Boko Haram (and other militant jihadi groups) had been slaughtering Christians and burning down churches since 2009. And Nigeria’s government clearly needed more firepower to deal with the insurgency.

To be clear, though, it wasn’t an idea that originated with the Trump administration. In 2016, a year before the Trump administration completed the sale of the fighters, the Obama administration had indicated that it was going to send these aircraft to Nigeria. But they backed out after Nigeria’s military bombed a civilian refugee camp by mistake, killing 90 people. Then, a few months later, the Trump administration took over, and they completed the transaction.

In the end, though, Boko Haram wasn’t defeated. Neither were other major Islamic militant groups in Nigeria. Several years after they obtained the planes from the U.S. military, the mass murder of Christians didn’t stop in Nigeria. In fact, it intensified. By some estimates — and I stress that these are very rough estimates — well over 24,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria from 2021 to 2025, while around 10,000 Christians were killed from 2017 to 2020. Every year, according to conservative estimates, at least 4,000 Christians are killed because of their faith in Nigeria — more than in every other country in the world, combined. Many of these Islamist attacks take place in churches, farms, and villages.

Watch:

TERRIFYING: Christians are being hunted like animals in Nigeria.

An Islamist group invaded a Christian village and started shooting everyone in sight.

They are killing Christians on Eid and offering them as human sacrifices.

The media remains silent.

pic.twitter.com/mBml0cDsU7

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) June 6, 2025

In response to footage like this, and the massacres of Christians, here’s the framing you’ll see in the mainstream press. This is from the AP. See if you can spot the hole in the logic here:

While Christians are among those targeted, analysts say the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, where most attacks occur…. Analysts say Nigeria’s complex security dynamics do not meet the legal definition of a genocide.

Then there’s this analysis from an esteemed professor at NYU in the same piece:

If anything, what we are witnessing is mass killings, which are not targeted against a specific group,” said Olajumoke Ayandele, an assistant professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs who specializes in conflict studies. ‘The drumming-up of genocide might worsen the situation because everyone is going to be on alert.’

In other words, according to the AP and this professor at NYU, Christians aren’t being targeted for extermination by Muslims, because both Christians and Muslims are being killed in large numbers by extremist groups. That’s the logic. It’s not just Christians who are dying. Therefore, Christians aren’t being massacred. It’s a bit like saying innocent people aren’t being targeted by the Joker, because the Joker also kills some of his henchmen when they make him angry.

The problem, of course, is that in both cases that the AP is talking about, the Muslims are the ones who are doing the killing. Christians aren’t raiding Muslim farms and mosques and massacring everyone. Christians aren’t lining up Muslims and shooting them in the head because they won’t convert.

Muslims are committing those atrocities against Christians. And yes, they’re also killing moderate Muslims. They’re killing Muslims they disagree with. And on top of that, they’re also killing Christians, as part of their explicit goal of religious conquest and worldwide jihad. There’s an ISIS affiliate that’s active in northeast Nigeria right now, called Islamic State – West Africa Province, or ISWAP, and they’re currently in the process of murdering and enslaving Christian men, women, and children on their way to establishing a new caliphate. They’re one of the most powerful ISIS groups anywhere in the world. That’s the part of the story the AP would rather skip over, as they attempt to “both sides” this ongoing slaughter.

But you can’t skip over that part of the story because it’s clearly relevant to how the United States should respond. Think about the rise of ISIS in Iraq a decade ago. Obama declared that they weren’t a big threat. He called ISIS the “JV team.” Then, just six months later, ISIS took over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq and said they were going to start a new caliphate. And it wasn’t until Donald Trump took office and dramatically intensified the Pentagon’s attacks on ISIS in 2017 that they were finally defeated in both Iraq and Syria.

This is an example of a targeted American military intervention overseas that had a clear, tangible positive result for Americans — by eliminating an organization that was committed to conducting acts of terrorism on our soil — while also saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Christians. And make no mistake about it: Keeping Christians alive, wherever they may be, is clearly in the best interests of the United States. To that end, Donald Trump did not wage an endless war in the Middle East. It was a campaign that every reasonable person in the country thought was appropriate and justified.

What Trump is proposing to do now — as he says we’re going to carry out a “sweet” attack in Nigeria, going in “guns blazing” — is to follow the exact same strategy he used to great effect in his first administration. We have precedent showing that ISIS (and other Islamic militant groups) can be shut down, and very quickly. So why are Democrats opposing Trump’s apparent plan to attack Islamic terrorists in Nigeria?

One reason, of course, is that Democrats aren’t bothered by the persecution of Christians. They welcome it. After all, they persecute Christians within the borders of this country. Why would they care about Christians who are being slaughtered 5,000 miles away?

But there’s also something to be said for how Nigeria, in the eyes of Democrats, is a big success story for “democracy.” And they’re willing to cling to this mythology at all costs, no matter how many Christians need to die as a result. Every other month, the Biden administration would put out statements about how Nigeria is “Africa’s largest democracy.” Go to the archived version of the White House website, and you’ll find about a dozen of them. And Nigeria’s president at the time, Muhammadu Buhari, returned the favor.

Buhari was one of the first world leaders to declare that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election:

Congratulations to US President-Elect Joe Biden on his election at a time of uncertainty and fear in world affairs. His election is a reminder that democracy is the best form of government because it offers the people the opportunity to change their government by peaceful means.

So the messaging is pretty clear, from both sides. “Democracy,” as we all remember, was the Democrats’ top buzzword for the past few years. They couldn’t stop throwing the word around. They said the United States is a democracy. They said Nigeria is a democracy. They said your local dentist’s office is a democracy. And in every single case, Democrats were using the word “democracy” to describe some of the most undemocratic practices imaginable. Of course, in this country, they went on about the importance of “democracy” as they attempted to imprison (and murder) the leading presidential candidate, along with everyone who ever worked for him. In Nigeria, they pontificated about democracy even as the state lost its monopoly on the use of force, and as Islamist terrorist groups seized control of large portions of the country.

But Nigeria isn’t really a democracy. It’s a failed state where Christians are being hunted en masse. And you have to ask yourself: If the entire corporate media and the Democratic Party are willing to lie to you about what’s happening in Nigeria, why wouldn’t they excuse the same type of massacre in this country? It would be one thing if they tried to claim that foreign entanglements are inherently risky, or that we don’t want to risk the lives of U.S. servicemembers, or that we can solve all of Nigeria’s problems — all of their “multidimensional poverty” — by sending them a little more money.

But they’re not doing any of that. They’re telling you that Christians aren’t actually being gunned down, even though it’s happening on camera. Whatever Donald Trump chooses to do in Nigeria, Christians in this country — and all over the world — should never forget that. The people who want you dead aren’t just in Boko Haram, ISWAP, or ISIS. They’re not 5,000 miles away. They’re trying to return to power. They’re running in several major elections today, in fact. If that sounds like an overstatement — ask yourself, how are Christians treated in Somalia? It’s one of the most dangerous countries in the world for Christians. They’re murdered (and beheaded) for their faith all the time. Last Good Friday, Islamist militants shot six Christians in the shop where they worked, before torching the shop. What do you think happens when major cities in this country become indistinguishable from Somalia?

If they win today’s elections, with the help of millions of imported foreign voters, in Democrats’ eyes, it’ll be a major victory for “democracy.” What they won’t tell you is that their ideal version of democracy isn’t anything Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson had in mind. It’s Nigeria and Somalia’s definition of “democracy.” And one election in New York or Minneapolis at a time, we’re on our way to getting just that.