What to Know About U.S. Military Action in Nigeria

 

What to Know About U.S. Military Action in Nigeria

 

Before the strikes on Thursday, President Trump said he would halt all aid and go in “guns-a-blazing” to target militants.

 

By The New York Times

Published Nov. 3, 2025

Updated Dec. 26, 2025, 12:54 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/world/africa/trump-nigeria-military-christians.html

 

The U.S. strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria followed President Trump’s threat earlier this year to take military action if Nigeria’s government did not stop the killing of Christians by Islamist militants.

 

Mr. Trump did not specify which attacks he was referring to, nor did he cite evidence for the claim, made by several of his political allies, that Christians are being targeted in Nigeria.

 

The strikes

More than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, striking two ISIS camps in Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

 

The strike killed “multiple” ISIS terrorists, according to an initial assessment by U.S. Africa Command.

 

Announcing the strikes on social media, Mr. Trump said “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” accusing the group of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.”

 

The Defense Department said it worked with the Nigerian government to carry out the strikes, which the Nigerian Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement.

 

Trump’s threat

On Nov. 1, Mr. Trump said that if Nigeria’s government continued to “allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing.'”

 

“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” he wrote. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet”

 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to the president’s post by writing, “Yes sir,” adding that the Pentagon was “preparing for action.”

 

A day earlier, the Trump administration said it would reinstate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” a designation that the U.S. government applies to nations deemed to have “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.” Mr. Trump took a similar step in 2020, near the end of his first term, which was reversed during the Biden administration.

 

Mr. Trump’s threat of military intervention was a substantial escalation. When asked last month about specifics of his plan, he replied: “I envisage a lot of things. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

 

In the days leading up to Mr. Trump’s threats, several of his political allies made similar accusations. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas accused Nigeria of “facilitating the mass murder” of Christians.

 

Nigeria’s response

Nigeria has denied the accusations. In a statement on Friday, the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said terrorist attacks against Christians, Muslims, or any community were “an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security.”

 

The characterization of Nigeria “as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement in November, citing what he described as sustained efforts by the government to safeguard freedom of religion and belief for all Nigerians.

 

Violence in Nigeria

Nigeria, home to around 220 million people, has large populations of Christians and Muslims. The U.S. strikes on Thursday occurred in a region along Nigeria’s border with Niger, where a branch of ISIS called the Islamic State-Sahel has attacked both government forces and civilians.

 

Parts of the country have long suffered violence from extremist groups, including Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group based in northeastern Nigeria that has attacked both Christians and Muslims it does not consider faithful enough. A splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province, has carried out similar attacks.

 

In a 2024 report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said extremist violence in Nigeria “affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states.”

 

Deadly clashes have also repeatedly occurred in central Nigeria between herders and farmers, as a battle for scarce resources stirs long-held tensions over religion and ethnicity. The herders are typically ethnic Fulani and Muslim, while the farmers are often Christian. Some conflicts are simply about armed men seizing land. And northwest Nigeria has a significant kidnap-for-ransom industry.

 

Pranav Baskar, Helene Cooper and Ruth Maclean contributed reporting.