Soludo reacts to Trump military threat over killings of Christians in Nigeria
Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State has responded sharply to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of military action against Nigeria over alleged mass killings of Christians. Soludo said the situation is more complex than a Christian-versus-Muslim conflict and rejected the idea of unilateral external intervention into Nigeria’s affairs.
Soludo emphasised that many of the violent acts in the South-East region, where the people are predominantly Christian, are in fact “Christians killing Christians.” He pointed out that the perpetrators often bear Christian names such as Emmanuel, Peter and John, illustrating that the violence is not easily categorised along religious lines.
He further noted that if Africa were to adopt the same logic used by Trump, then one might expect African nations to consider invading the United States over incidents like those that led to the Black Lives Matter protests, when Black Americans were killed by police. He said that possibility highlights the absurdity of unilateral military threats from one sovereign state to another.
Soludo also asserted that any request for foreign military or technical assistance by Nigeria should come formally through diplomatic channels, rather than through threats or coercion. He stressed that Nigeria is a sovereign nation and its government will respond robustly on behalf of its people.
In the wider context, Donald Trump had designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” under U.S. religious-freedom policy and threatened to cut aid and possibly deploy troops or carry out air strikes if the Nigerian government did not act swiftly to end what he described as the “mass slaughter” of Christians.
