By Stacy M. Brown
(NNPA) – Donald Trump says U.S. bombs fell on Nigeria to protect Christians. That explanation does not survive memory, geography, or fact.
On Christmas Day, American missiles struck northern Nigeria. The administration said the targets were terrorists killing Christians. But the same administration had already stripped away humanitarian aid, dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs, shut asylum doors, and blocked visas for Nigerians fleeing violence. The hand that claimed salvation had already withdrawn food, medicine, and refuge.
Nigeria is not a parable. It is a place where Muslims and Christians live side by side, where violence grows from drought, land loss, criminal networks, and borders carved by European powers to guarantee friction long after independence. The bloodshed there is not governed by scripture. It is governed by scarcity and power.
Professor Uju Anya named the contradiction without decoration. “Trump says he’s protecting Nigerian Christians,” Anya said. “Trump shuts down USAID and kills Nigerian Christians. Trump bans asylum for Nigerian Christians. Trump bans visas for Nigerian Christians. Trump bombs Nigeria, causing more misery, insecurity, and instability for Nigerian Christians.”
That misery was predictable.
When USAID was dismantled, clinics closed and food support vanished. More than a quarter-million people in Nigeria relied directly on U.S.-backed assistance. Those lives were weighed and dismissed before the first missile was launched.
Then came the strikes.
Witnesses described missiles tearing into farmland and open fields. Anti-war journalist Dave DeCamp reported that multiple U.S. missiles failed to detonate, sinking into the ground. The operation cost nearly $30 million. No evidence was released tying the bombed areas to the killings Trump cited.
At the same time, the administration also bombed Somalia. By DeCamp’s count, U.S. Africa Command has carried out at least 127 airstrikes in Somalia this year alone, more than double the previous annual record. AFRICOM has largely stopped responding to press inquiries.
The facts on Nigeria further unravel the story being told.
From 2020 through 2025, more Muslims than Christians were killed in religiously targeted attacks. Armed groups such as Boko Haram and ISIS–West Africa primarily kill Muslims who resist them, alongside Christians and others. The deadliest Christian losses have largely occurred in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, not in the northern regions struck by U.S. bombs.
If the goal were protection, the map would not look like this.
Northern Nigeria sits beneath Niger and alongside Mali and Burkina Faso, members of the Sahel alliance that expelled Western military forces and reclaimed control over gold, gas, uranium, and other strategic minerals. Niger is one of the world’s leading suppliers of uranium. Mali and Burkina Faso sit atop vast gold reserves. Nigeria remains Africa’s largest oil producer and holds significant rare earth deposits.
This pattern is not new.
In a social media post, human rights lawyer Chief Malcolm Emokiniovon Omirhobo described the strikes as part of a broader design. “The United States of America is not interested in the lives of Black Christians in Northern Nigeria,” Omirhobo said. “The real interest of the U.S. is geostrategic control.”
He said Nigeria is being positioned as a military launchpad for pressure and potential regime-change operations against Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. “This has nothing to do with Christianity,” Omirhobo said. “This has everything to do with resources, power, and influence.”
The selective outrage has been noticed.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann questioned why Trump claimed moral urgency over Christians in Nigeria while remaining silent about Christians killed during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Members of Congress have also raised alarms. Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett warned against normalizing evidence-free violence. “None of this should be normalized,” Crockett said, noting that Trump has bombed Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, and targets in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific this year alone.
Nigeria is left with the consequences.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu now governs a country pulled deeper into proxy conflict, religious polarization, and regional instability. History offers no reassurance. From Libya to Iraq to Afghanistan, U.S. bombs have never stayed to rebuild what they destroyed.
“When the dust settles,” Omirhobo warned. “The U.S. will leave just as it left Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and Nigeria will be left to deal with the blowback: deeper insecurity, ethnic tension, religious polarization, and a weakened sovereignty.”