Trump takes fresh aim at Nigeria as US Africa command propose options for attack
US President Donald Trump took fresh aim at two of Africa’s biggest economies, renewing his threat of an attack on Islamist militants in Nigeria and questioning South Africa’s role in the Group of 20 days before it hosts a global summit.
Trump in particular berated the Nigerian government for failing to contain the islamic militancy in the north of the country that has killed thousands and said his forces will be made to.do the work but there will be peice like he’ll to be paid.
In a video posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump reiterated his claim that the Nigerian government is failing to prevent the killing of Christians and said he’s asked the Pentagon to prepare for “possible action” unless the West African nation acts.
“The Nigerian government better move fast before its too late,” Trump said. “If they don’t there is going be hell to pay.”
The fresh threat against Nigeria came after a New York Times report that the US Africa command had proposed three options for attacking Nigeria.
Three defense officials said the plans from the command had three options — light, medium and heavy — and were intended to be escalatory. The light option, the officials said, included what the military called partner-enabled operations. Under that option, the U.S. military and the State Department would support government forces in Nigeria to target Boko Haram and other Islamic insurgents who have attacked, kidnapped and murdered civilians, mostly in northern Nigeria, where sectarian and ethnic violence has raged for almost 20 years.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim whose wife is a Christian pastor, said on Sunday he was committed to working with the US and international community to protect all faiths. But “the characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” he said.
The nation of 230 million — roughly split between Christians and Muslims — has suffered from years of ethnic violence, with more than 20,000 killed since 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data nonprofit, which tracks such incidents around the world. Of the almost 12,000 attacks in that period, the vast bulk were not religiously motivated.
While Trump’s initial comments over the weekend led to some selling of Nigerian bonds earlier this week, the country was still able to sell $2.35 billion of new debt to global investors on Wednesday. Demand was big, with orders topping $12 billion.
The US president also said South Africa — the continent’s biggest economy — shouldn’t form part of the G20. Pretoria is preparing to host a summit of the group’s leaders on Nov. 22-23, though Trump reiterated that he won’t be attending, with Vice President JD Vance travelling to the forum in his stead.
“South Africa shouldn’t even be in the Gs anymore, because what’s happened there is bad,” he said at an America Business Forum event in Miami.
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Trump has previously made the false claim that there’s a genocide against White Afrikaner farmers in South Africa, which led him to offer them refugee status in the US.
