Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump on Friday said that the United States is ready to take action to help severely persecuted Christians in Nigeria, amid what has begun to amount to outright genocide in the West African nation at the hands of Islamic jihadists.
The president wrote on Truth Social, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN’ — But that is the least of it.”
The president noted the high number of killings in Nigeria and directed Congressman Riley Moore, R-W. Va., along with Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.), to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me.”
Rep. Moore sounded the alarm on this urgent issue in early October, urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio to redesignate the West African nation as a Country of Particular Concern, as the president did on Friday.
A Country of Particular Concern is a specific designation reviewed by the President of the United States and assigned by the U.S. State Department that essentially red-flags countries whose government has engaged in “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” such as torture, kidnapping, and other extreme violations.
According to the congressman’s office, “over 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in 2025 alone – an average of 35 per day – with hundreds more kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by extremist groups such as Boko Haram.”
Boko Haram is a violent Jihadi extremist terrorist group.
Shockingly, Rep. Moore said that more than 50,000 Christians have been murdered in Nigeria since 2009.
According to Genocide Watch, more than 20,000 churches and Christian schools have been attacked in Nigeria. Per their report:
“Mixed in with religious motives involved in these dire statistics, of course, are conflicts over land, abductions for ransom (especially of Catholic priests), and other points of conflict. But the specifically anti-Christian targeting in the great majority of these cases defies other explanation.”
They, too, urged the Trump administration to label Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. It seems as if the president is taking this threat very seriously.
“The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries,” President Trump said on Friday.
He continued, “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”