He poses as a defender of Christian communities. On Thursday, December 25, Donald Trump announced that the United States had carried out “numerous” deadly strikes against the Islamic State, in the state of Sokoto, in the northwest of Nigeria. The American leader accuses the terrorist organization, which is raging in the most populous country in West Africa, of perpetrating crimes which he describes as “massacres of Christians”, affirming that the latter suffer an “existential threat” of the order of “genocide”. A confessional reading of this complex conflict, questioned by many experts. L’Express takes stock of the situation.
⋅ Why did Donald Trump officially order these strikes?
The United States announced that it had carried out several strikes on Christmas Day against Islamic State positions in northwestern Nigeria, at the request of the Nigerian authorities. These strikes were carried out by guided missiles fired from drones operating at medium altitude, “from maritime platforms based in the Gulf of Guinea”, Nigerian Information Minister Mohammed Idris said on Friday evening. “A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralizing ISIS elements attempting to enter Nigeria from the Sahel corridor,” he detailed in a statement.
Donald Trump, for his part, justified this intervention by the need to respond to what he described as “massacres of Christians” by the terrorist group, and welcomed the fact that “all the jihadist camps” targeted by the American army had been “decimated”, in an interview broadcast on December 26 by the media Politico. Much of the recent violence in Sokoto State — a predominantly Muslim region — is attributable to a group called Lakurawa, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Some analysts, including those at ACLED, associate the group with the Islamic State, while others say Lakurawa is affiliated with a rival organization affiliated with Al Qaeda.
⋅ Are Christians the subject of a massacre as Donald Trump claims?
“Most of the so-called religious violence actually concerns Muslims killed by other Muslims, particularly as part of the actions of the Boko Haram movement. There are of course attacks targeting Christians, sometimes against churches, but they remain in the very minority,” says the Echos Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, research director at the Research Institute for Development (IRD).
In Nigeria, violence is indeed protean, and varies according to region. In the northeast, Boko Haram and Islamic State militants are active; in the northwest, bandits – some of whom are linked to Islamist groups – predominate; and in the center of the country, conflicts between Christian farmers and Muslim breeders are commonplace, but above all for land and political reasons, linked to access to land and resources.
“The areas that the Americans have struck and over which they are carrying out their aerial surveillance operations are not the regions in which the most deaths have been recorded in the Christian community. Christians are especially victims of violence in the Middle Belt, at the heart of an intense conflict between breeders and farmers. But it would be extremely difficult to carry out strikes in this region without risking collateral victims”, supports Nnamdi Obasi, researcher at the International Crisis Group, interviewed by RFI.
⋅ What does Nigeria say?
Nigeria challenges the confessional reading grid imposed by Donald Trump. Speaking to the BBC, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar declared that it was a “joint operation” against “terrorists” and that it “had nothing to do with any particular religion.” After discussions between the U.S. and Nigerian defense ministries, Tuggar said Secretary of State Marco Rubio called him Thursday evening. During their 19-minute conversation, the Nigerian minister insisted that communications regarding the strikes should not be “hindered by the religious issue,” and later reported this conversation to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who approved the strikes. “This is part of our fight against insecurity. This operation will be a continuing joint effort to fight terrorism in Nigeria until we dismantle their cells in Nigeria and around our borders,” he said. Washington Post.
Because in Sokoto State and the north of the country, extremists are imposing increasingly strict versions of Islamist law, such as requiring residents to follow conservative dress codes and remove music from their phones. For Malik Samuel, senior researcher at Good Governance Africa, who has studied Islamist militants for more than ten years, this explains why many Nigerians welcome this American intervention, while they accuse their government of not having done enough to “resist” in the face of this threat. On the other hand, for this specialist, the term “genocide” used by Donald Trump is once again inaccurate, and his assertion that ISIS militants were affected is “doubtful”, he explains to Washington Post.
⋅ What would be the real reason for Donald Trump’s intervention?
“This sequence is part of a dynamic initiated at the beginning of 2025, when representatives of Nigerian evangelical churches were interviewed in the American Congress, denouncing an alleged genocide and calling for sanctions against the Nigerian government. This rhetoric, carried by conservative religious circles, finds a particular echo in the United States, where these currents constitute an important electoral base for Donald Trump”, explains Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, still in Les Echos.
At the end of October, at the end of this lobbying campaign, the Trump administration had in fact re-listed Nigeria on the list of countries of “particular concern” in terms of freedom of religion, leading to diplomatic pressure and sanctions against the country. In the process, the American president made a series of threats against this “disgraced country”, lists the independent think tank International Crisis Group: cuts in financial aid, threats of military intervention, restrictions on the granting of visas to Nigerians, etc.
“Is the attack on ISIS in Nigeria linked to a broader anti-terrorism campaign? Or are these strikes aimed at appeasing Christians in the United States who make up part of the president’s electorate?” Colin P. Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, an intelligence and consulting firm based in New York, pretended to wonder in an email to New York Times. “I am completely in favor of the fight against Daesh in Africa, but its rationale should not be ideological or religious,” he added, saying that “the United States should dismantle the threat posed by Daesh in Africa because it constitutes a risk to national security and American interests”.
