Senator Ali Ndume has said President Donald Trump’s comments on alleged Christian genocide in Nigeria were due to his “ignorance” and lack of proper information about the country’s security situation.
This followed Trump’s claims in a post on his Truth Social platform that Christians were being massacred in Nigeria.
He announced that he had redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) and threatened military action against “terrorists attacking Christians.”
Reacting during an interview on ARISE Television, on Tuesday, Ndume said Trump’s statement showed a lack of understanding of Nigeria’s complex insecurity challenges.
“This is not to say Christians are not being killed. What we’ve been saying is that it’s not only Christians — Muslims are also being killed too,” the senator said.
He added, “This has been confirmed by both religion, there’s a lot of killings going on in Nigeria for the past 16 years and more from the Boko Haram insurgence in 2009. Nobody can deny that.
“But to say exclusively that the Christians are being targeted depends on where the event happens. If it happens in Plateau or a Christian dominated area, naturally it is the Christians that will be the victims as it is now in Benue and Plateau.
According to him, “If you go to other areas that are Muslim dominated, depending on the type of criminality that is going on there, the victims are naturally going to be the Muslims.
“If a church is attacked, the victims will be Christians, and if it’s a mosque the Muslims will be the victims. This is what’s going on in Nigeria right now.
Nudme stressed, “If a church is attacked, the victims will be Christians, and if it’s a mosque, the Muslims will be the victims. That’s the reality,” Ndume stated.
“For Trump to have come out to make such a claim is out of ignorance. Donald Trump himself is ignorant about what is happening in Nigeria.”
Ndume added that he had recently sponsored a motion in the Senate to address what he called “misconceptions” surrounding Nigeria’s security crisis and to urge the U.S. government to reconsider its classification of Nigeria as a CPC.
He recalled that Nigeria was previously removed from the list during former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration after engagements with the U.S. government to clarify the nature of the insurgency.
According to him, the violence ravaging parts of the country has continued to affect Nigerians of all faiths and backgrounds, and must be addressed as a national — not religious — issue.
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