Gumi to FG: confront Trump’s threat or cut ties with U.S.
Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi has called on the federal government to take a hard line with Washington, warning that Nigeria should be ready to sever diplomatic relations if U.S. President Donald Trump does not withdraw his threat of military intervention.
Gumi’s statement, issued Sunday, follows a wave of provocative remarks from Washington that has placed U.S.–Nigeria relations under unusual strain.
The tension escalated on Friday when Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” over allegations of Christian genocide. Within hours, he went further—declaring that the U.S. could halt all aid to Nigeria and even “go into that now disgraced country guns-a-blazing” to eliminate what he described as Islamic terrorists targeting Christians.
His comments were reinforced by Pete Hegseth, the U.S. secretary of war, who told American media that his department had begun preparing for possible military action if Abuja failed to stop the “killing of innocent Christians.”
Read Also: Kwankwaso rebukes Trump’s warning, calls for US cooperation not intervention
Trump’s posture has been amplified by a handful of right-wing lawmakers, particularly Senator Ted Cruz, who has repeatedly framed Nigeria as hostile to Christians. In October, Cruz tabled the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025, a bill seeking sanctions against Nigerian officials accused of enabling violence against Christians or enforcing Sharia and blasphemy laws. He introduced the legislation shortly before Trump signed a memo categorising various anti-American or anti-Christian ideologies as forms of domestic terrorism.
Against this backdrop, Gumi is urging President Bola Tinubu to respond decisively.
“For Trump to threaten a sovereign country with military attack is a profound disrespect to our authority, but we can rise above it,” the cleric said. He asked the federal government to summon the U.S. ambassador and demand an immediate retraction of the military threat.
“They either retract their threats or we sever diplomatic ties with this irresponsible regime,” Gumi wrote, arguing that Nigeria has “lots of other options for our economic expansion and military alliance.”
The cleric’s remarks reflect growing domestic frustration over what many Nigerians see as Washington’s one-sided narrative on religious tensions. But they also put pressure on the Tinubu administration, which must weigh the political value of standing firm against the U.S. against the diplomatic and economic consequences of escalating the standoff.
