Asked by an AFP reporter aboard Air Force One if he was considering putting US troops on the ground or using airstrikes, Trump replied: \u201cCould be, I mean, a lot of things \u2013 I envisage a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to allow that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pushing back on the accusations, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said religious tolerance was \u201ca core tenet of our collective identity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ethnic violence <\/p>\n
Auta, 56, hails from Plateau state, where Christians and Muslims have long lived side by side.<\/p>\n
The state has also seen explosions of violence \u2013 including deadly sectarian riots in the capital Jos in 2001 and 2008.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Plateau and other states in Nigeria\u2019s \u201cMiddle Belt\u201d have suffered deadly clashes between mostly Christian farmers and Fulani Muslim herders over dwindling land and resources.<\/p>\n
The conflict has often resulted in massive death tolls on the side of the farmers, with entire villages razed.<\/p>\n
Smaller-scale attacks on herders \u2013 including retaliatory killings of random ethnic Fulanis or their cattle \u2013 often generate fewer headlines in both the local and international press.<\/p>\n
Though the violence appears on the surface to fall across ethnic and religious lines, experts say the root causes lie in poor land management and policing in rural areas.<\/p>\n
Words like \u201cgenocide\u201d have been thrown around by those in Plateau frustrated by the escalating violence, though typically in ethnic, not religious terms.<\/p>\n
Claims of a \u201cChristian genocide\u201d meanwhile have been pushed in recent years by separatist groups in the southeast.<\/p>\n
US-based firm Moran Global Strategies has been lobbying on behalf of separatists this year, advising congressional staff on what it said was Christian \u201cpersecution\u201d, according to lobbying disclosures.<\/p>\n
Row over deportations, visas <\/p>\n
Nigeria also faces a long-running jihadist conflict in its northeast and \u201cbandit\u201d gangs in the northwest who conduct kidnappings and village raids.<\/p>\n
The north\u2019s population is mostly Muslim \u2013 meaning most of the victims are, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven those who sold this narrative of Christian genocide know it is not true,\u201d said Abubakar Gamandi, a Muslim who heads a fishermen\u2019s union in Borno state, the epicentre of the Boko Haram conflict.<\/p>\n
Oxford Economics political analyst Jervin Naidoo said that \u201cwhile the terrorism threat is real\u201d, Washington\u2019s amped-up rhetoric could be related to Abuja rejecting demands to accept non-Nigerian deportees expelled from the United States as part of Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis move differs from countries like Eswatini, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana, which have complied. In response, the US tightened visa rules for Nigerians,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
Trump previously attacked South Africa over what he called a \u201cgenocide\u201d against its Dutch-descended Afrikaner community and has offered them refugee status.<\/p>\n
Critics of the President said the rhetoric was part of Trump\u2019s hardline diplomatic strategy, yet it has also resonated with some in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Reverend Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria for the country\u2019s north, said he rejected the framing of \u201cfarmer-herder violence\u201d and called Trump\u2019s comments a \u201cwake-up call\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are twisting the story as if Trump said he is coming to fight Nigeria. No, he is coming to deal with terrorists,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Tinubu spokesman Daniel Bwala noted that \u201cDonald Trump has his own style of communication\u201d, suggesting to AFP Sunday that Trump\u2019s post was a way to \u201cforce a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity\u201d.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked by an AFP reporter aboard Air Force One if he was considering putting US troops on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2840,1863,82648,82650,2841,2178,305,42,56818,11156,647,36990,43,78452,90,1523,2572,15400,26520,82649,5441,19063,18937,26452,40,38,41,39,19096,3040],"class_list":["post-116277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-across","tag-back","tag-christian","tag-christians","tag-country","tag-donald","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-intervention","tag-killing","tag-military","tag-muslim","tag-news","tag-nigerians","tag-on","tag-over","tag-president","tag-push","tag-pushed","tag-religious","tag-spectrum","tag-strikes","tag-threatened","tag-threats","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trumps","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}