Top advisers from the Trump Administration sat at the head of a giant wooden table in an office near the White House in late October listening as religious activists described attacks on Christian churches and pastors in Nigeria. The activists wanted President Trump to do something about it.
Three days later, the president threatened to enter Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to avenge what he has called a “Christian genocide.” Then, on Christmas Day, Mr. Trump launched Tomahawk missiles at “terrorist scum” he said were responsible for killing Nigerian Christians.
The strike was the explosive outcome of an intense, yearslong push led by Christian activists, Republican lawmakers and American celebrities seeking U.S. intervention in a long-simmering security crisis in Nigeria.
Thousands are killed annually in Nigeria, and the victims include large numbers of both Christians and Muslims. The violence involves battles over land, kidnappings for ransom, sectarian tensions and terrorism, but the activists wanted Mr. Trump to see the conflict through a single lens: the persecution of Christians.
Now, the activists have seized on his support to orchestrate a rapid shift in American foreign policy toward Nigeria, with major consequences for the West African nation, including the threat of more bombings. “Our challenge,” said Nina Shea, an activist and the former commissioner for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “was to break through the narrative that this was not religious based.”
In Davos, Switzerland, last month, Mr. Trump praised the December strikes. “In Nigeria we’re annihilating terrorists who are killing Christians,” he said. “We’ve hit them very hard.” A congressional spending measure released in January would condition half of U.S. aid to Nigeria on whether the country has done enough to stop the violence, advance “religious freedom” and investigate “jihadist terror groups.”
Mr. Trump told The New York Times recently that he would approve more strikes if Christians continued to be killed, and last month, senior U.S. leaders were in Nigeria’s capital to announce a new, closer military partnership between the two nations.
For the Christian activists, Mr. Trump’s support has been the rightful outcome of a mission one key U.S. congressman described as a calling from God. For the Nigerian government, correcting the record on who bears the brunt of the violence has become less important than making concessions to Mr. Trump.
A Shocking Massacre
For years, the Christian activists had tried to get the Biden administration to re-designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, a category reserved for nations where religious freedom is threatened, making them vulnerable to sanctions.
Mr. Trump had put Nigeria on the list during his first term, but the Biden administration lifted the designation in 2021. The State Department’s report on religious freedom in Nigeria that year said there were mass killings of both Christians and Muslims, but it did not single out Christians as a singular target.
The return of Mr. Trump offered a new opening.
Armed with gruesome anecdotes and shocking but in some cases unreliable data on the number of Nigerian Christians killed for their faith, two dozen activists from groups dedicated to exposing Christian persecution around the world, such as the international organization Aid to the Church in Need, pursued various Trump officials.
Rev. Wilfred C. Anagbe, a prominent bishop from the Middle Belt of Nigeria, a central area where the mostly Muslim north meets the mostly Christian south, was invited to testify on Capitol Hill last March. He told members of a House subcommittee on Africa that “the experience of the Nigerian Christians today can be summed up as that of a Church under Islamist extermination.”
In June, one of Nigeria’s worst incidents of violence in years broke out in the bishop’s home state of Benue. Gunmen overran the largely Christian community of Yelwata, hacking, shooting and burning residents in a horrific, bloody massacre. In all, about 200 civilians were killed.
“It was so shocking in its brutality,” said Sean Nelson, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom International, an Austria-based organization with U.S. offices.
Such brutal attacks are also perpetrated against Muslims, including herders who are often nomadic and don’t have political representation, said Matthew Page, a former diplomat and a Nigeria expert. “The extent to which they are victims is just never revealed,” he said.
Religious groups on Capitol Hill circulated stories about the Yelwata attack to get lawmakers’ attention. One that resonated, lawmakers said, was an article in The Free Press, founded by media executive Bari Weiss. The article focused heavily on the killing of Christians.
Representative Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, cited the Yelwata attacks in July when he introduced a House Resolution condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries. By the fall, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had introduced a measure calling for sanctions against Nigeria.
The atrocity at Yelwata was a breakthrough moment for the activists, but not everyone in the Trump administration saw the massacre as proof of genocide. Massad Boulos, Mr. Trump’s Africa adviser who spent decades selling trucks in Nigeria, arrived in Rome in October for a meeting with Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, to discuss strengthening U.S.-Nigeria ties.
Mr. Boulos said afterward that Islamist groups were killing more Muslims than Christians and that the Trump administration understood the complexity of the violence plaguing Africa’s most populous country.
Mr. Trump told The Times last month “that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria, but it’s mostly Christians.”
A White House Meeting
Back in Washington, anti-persecution groups secured the meeting with Trump officials near the White House just as Republicans were gathering for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
Sitting at the grand wooden table, they outlined their concerns to Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, who has falsely argued that violence is a fundamental part of Islam.
Mr. Nelson, another attendee, spoke at a “Christian Persecution Summit” at CPAC the next day. He argued that putting Nigeria back on the Country of Particular Concern list would pressure the nation into taking action to protect Christians.
“They value our economic relationship, they value the security assistance that we provide,” Mr. Nelson said of Nigerian officials.
The next day, on Oct. 31, Mr. Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he had officially put Nigeria back on the list, and then a short while later he posted that he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning potential military action. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet,” he wrote.
Nigerian officials tried to counter the notion of a Christian genocide. Mohammed Idris, Nigeria’s information minister, described Mr. Trump’s claims as “false, baseless, despicable and divisive,” and the foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, implied that the true goal was to destabilize Nigeria, take its resources and turn the African nation into a failed state.
‘Why Are You Punishing Us?’
In response to the Country of Particular Concern designation, a Nigerian delegation traveled to Washington to convince U.S. officials of their efforts to bolster security.
Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and chairman of the Africa subcommittee, said the meeting did not satisfy him that the Nigerians were taking the issue seriously.
“‘Why are you punishing us?’” Mr. Smith said one of the Nigerian officials asked. The congressman said he told the official, “This is about helping you to help your own people.”
Accusations of genocide continued to spread.
The television host Piers Morgan interviewed Rev. Ezekiel Dachomo, a Nigerian who had filmed himself jumping into graves to protest Christian murders. The rapper Nicki Minaj was invited to speak about Christian persecution in Nigeria at the United Nations after she posted about it on social media. Dozens of current and retired N.F.L. players signed an open letter calling on Mr. Trump to do more to confront “religious persecution in Nigeria.”
Bishop Anagbe of Nigeria testified again, in November, for the same congressional subcommittee. “The Church alone cannot stop the killings; it requires coordinated political, military and humanitarian intervention,” he said.
The U.S. military had already begun assessing strike options for Mr. Trump, according to two American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military planning. The military could use planes or drones to attack militants.
But the Pentagon decided on a much more modest first step: The U.S. military would offer intelligence to help Nigeria carry out its own airstrikes against targets in early December, according to one of the officials. But Mr. Trump wanted to send an even stronger message, the official said.
In early December, Mr. Moore led a delegation to the Middle Belt to meet with Christian leaders. “I don’t think these things happen by accident,” Mr. Moore said in an interview with The Times. “God has put me here to save these people’s lives.”
Not long after the delegation returned from their trip, a law firm that said it was representing the Nigerian government signed a $9 million contract with a Washington lobbying outfit for help “communicating its actions to protect Nigerian’s Christian communities” and countering jihadist groups.
Two days later, the State Department announced spending to expand health services in Nigeria, including “significant dedicated funding to support Christian health care facilities” after Nigerian officials had agreed to prioritize protecting Christians.
‘The Partnership Is Working’
Orders from the Pentagon arrived at Africa Command in mid-December to dispatch a Navy destroyer to the Gulf of Guinea on a secret mission.
Its crew members had prepared to spend Christmas at their home port in Spain, but they were summoned on short notice to the ship, steaming at top speed to waters off Nigeria.
By Dec. 24, the destroyer was in place and ready to fire its Tomahawk missiles. Targets had been selected and vetted through a joint U.S.-Nigerian intelligence cooperation.
But Mr. Trump decided to delay the strikes by one day so they would happen on Christmas, one of the U.S. officials said. That timing would surely resonate with the Christian activists who had pushed Mr. Trump to take stronger action in Nigeria, the U.S. officials said.
On Christmas Day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio phoned Mr. Tuggar, Nigeria’s foreign minister, for permission from Nigeria’s president to launch.
The missiles, valued at about $32 million, hit northwest Nigeria, an overwhelmingly Muslim area hundreds of miles from the Middle Belt. American military officials are still assessing damage but said that more than three dozen Islamic State-affiliated terrorists were flushed out and later arrested by Nigerian authorities.
Residents have said the missiles hit empty fields and vacant militant hide-outs.
Several activists said they were surprised by how far Mr. Trump went, pointing out that they had not explicitly pressed for military strikes. But they were pleased with the outcome nevertheless.
“The symbolic value of it is saying the U.S. is taking this seriously, that they’re not going to leave Christians feeling like they’re left behind,” Mr. Nelson said.
Mr. Moore, the West Virginia congressman, plans to soon present Mr. Trump with the results of an investigation the president requested on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
Mr. Boulos is now aligned with Mr. Trump’s current approach to Nigeria, multiple U.S. officials said. “He’s now changed his tune,” said Mr. Smith, the New Jersey congressman.
Faced with American pressure, Nigerian officials have stopped arguing with the Trump administration.
“The partnership is working” between the United States and Nigeria, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s national security adviser, told top U.S. officials in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, last month. Even Mr. Tuggar backed away from arguing against the Trump administration on the issue. “We are not going to get bogged down on narratives,” he said in an interview after the strikes.
“We’re more concerned about results,” he added, “and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
Saikou Jammeh, Ismail Alfa and Dickson Adama contributed reporting.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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