Nigeria says US must respect its sovereignty
Nigeria has said it would welcome US assistance in fighting Islamist rebels as long as its territorial integrity is respected.
One of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s advisers has responded to US President Donald Trump’s threats of military action over what he says is the mistreatment of Christians in the West African country.
Trump said on Saturday that he had asked the Defense Department to prepare for possible “swift” military action in Nigeria if Africa’s most populous country does not take action against the killing of Christians.
“We welcome US aid as long as it recognizes our territorial integrity,” Tinubu’s adviser Daniel Bwala told Reuters.
Bwala sought to downplay the tensions between the two states, despite Trump calling Nigeria a “disgraceful country.”
“We don’t take it literally because we know Donald Trump thinks well of Nigeria,” Bwala said.
“I am sure that when these two leaders come together and sit down, better results will be achieved from our common determination to fight terrorism,” he said.
Nigeria, home to more than 200 million people and nearly 200 ethnic groups, is divided between the mostly Muslim north and the mostly Christian south.
Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province have wreaked havoc in the country for more than 15 years, killing thousands of people, but their attacks have been largely confined to the predominantly Muslim northeast of the country.
Analysts say Christians were killed, but the vast majority of victims were Muslims.
In central Nigeria, there are frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers over access to water and pasture, while in the country’s northwest, gunmen routinely attack villages and kidnap residents for ransom.
Bwala said Nigeria “does not discriminate against any tribe or religion in the fight against insecurity.”
“There is no Christian genocide.”
“Insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa often present their campaigns as anti-Christian, but in practice their violence is indiscriminate and devastates entire communities,” said Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at US crisis monitoring group ACLED.
“Islamist violence is part of complex and often overlapping conflict dynamics in the country, including political power, land disputes, ethnicity, sect membership and banditry,” he said.
ACLED research shows that of the 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria so far this year, the number of attacks targeting Christians because of their religion is 50.
Serwat said recent claims circulating among some right-wing circles in the US that as many as 100,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009 are not supported by available data.
