20 February, 2026
by Mohammed Bello Doka
In the blood-soaked heartlands of Nigeria’s North and the so called Middle Belt—where Christian communities cower under relentless assaults by Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ethnic Christian Militia in Plateau, Taraba, Benue and Fulani militias—a dangerous and intoxicating myth has taken hold. Across churches, pulpits, WhatsApp groups, and diaspora prayer networks, thousands of Nigerian Christians have convinced themselves they are targets of a coordinated Muslim genocide and that deliverance will descend not from Abuja or their own fractured politics, but from Washington. In this apocalyptic imagination, Donald J. Trump has been elevated to near-messianic status: a warrior-president anointed to storm Africa and rescue persecuted believers.
Since his second inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump has deliberately fed and amplified this narrative. In November 2025 he designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” over religious-freedom violations; he repeatedly vowed a potential “guns-a-blazing” intervention; and on Christmas Day 2025 he ordered Tomahawk missile strikes on alleged terrorist hideouts in northern Nigeria. Advocacy groups including Open Doors and the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law reported over 3,000 Christian deaths in 2025 from faith-related violence alone—statistics that entrenched Nigeria’s status as one of the world’s most dangerous places for Christians and cemented Trump’s image among believers as a long-awaited foreign savior and or messiah.
Yet this fervent devotion is not merely naïve—it is catastrophically delusional. It conceals Trump’s broader record: a leader who simultaneously arms the forces killing Palestinian Christians in the very land where Jesus Christ—born in Bethlehem under Roman occupation as a Palestinian Jew—preached love, mercy, and nonviolence. And as Trump’s coercive doctrines expand from Africa into the Americas and Europe, a devastating question emerges with moral urgency: if Trump is hailed as the savior of Nigerian Christians, who will protect European Christians and by extension the global Christiandom from Trump himself?
The casualty narrative Trump amplifies inside Nigeria is itself deeply contested. Independent analyses indicate fewer than 500 deaths in 2025 directly attributable to anti-Christian persecution—numbers fiercely debated against the 3,000 figure widely circulated by advocacy groups. Nonetheless, Trump repeatedly labeled Nigerian violence a “Christian genocide” throughout 2025, directed the Pentagon to prepare intervention plans, and pursued security partnerships despite Nigerian government resistance. A prominent Nigerian Christian leader publicly exulted that Trump’s “intervention” proved “help is coming.” On social media platform X, adoration surged: “The saving grace of Nigerian Christians… is President Donald Trump”; praise for him “keeping his words” to crush banditry; claims his moves were divine response to neglected massacres.
But this worship ignores the glaring contradiction at the core of Trump’s global strategy in and on itself. While presenting himself as defender of Christians in Nigeria, he bombs, threatens, coerces, and destabilizes multiple Christian-majority nations under the pretexts of security, narcotics control, or resource access—an aggressive doctrine now stretching ominously into Europe itself.
Venezuela stands as the clearest Exhibit A: a nation where 88–90 percent of citizens are Christian, overwhelmingly Catholic. On January 3, 2026, Trump launched Operation Absolute Resolve. U.S. aircraft struck military targets around Caracas to cripple air defenses while special operations forces seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and flew them to New York for narcoterrorism trials. Trump bluntly declared the United States was now “running” Venezuela temporarily to control its oil wealth, projecting billions in managed revenues. Naval blockades and threats of further strikes hang over dissent. This was not humanitarian liberation; it was an unapologetic sovereignty assault inside a deeply Christian society—displacing civilians, rupturing institutions, and plunging Venezuelan churches into grief. Nigerian believers who venerate Trump must confront the contradiction: why does their savior subjugate Venezuelan Christians?
Cuba, with 60–70 percent Christian population across Catholic and Protestant traditions, faces parallel coercion. After Venezuela, Trump severed the Venezuelan oil lifeline sustaining Cuba’s economy, declared a U.S. national emergency over Havana’s “malign influence,” and imposed tariffs on any nation supplying Cuban fuel. He warned the Cuban regime to “make a deal before it is too late,” floated regime-change scenarios, and asserted Cuba was “ready to fall” without invasion. Intelligence reporting indicated covert back-channel destabilization efforts. Cuban Christians—already navigating communist restrictions—now endure severe economic suffocation engineered by the same Trump celebrated in Nigeria.
Mexico, about 80 percent Christian and overwhelmingly Catholic, stands on the brink of similar interventionism. In early 2026 Trump escalated threats of unilateral U.S. military action against cartels inside Mexican territory. On January 8, 2026, during a Fox News appearance, he vowed: “We are going to start hitting land with regard to the cartels,” insisting “the cartels are running Mexico.” He demanded Mexico “get their act together” on narcotics flows, offering coercive “assistance.” President Claudia Sheinbaum flatly rejected any U.S. military presence. Mexico’s Christian majority thus finds itself framed as collateral within Trump’s narco-militarized agenda.
Colombia—roughly 90 percent Christian—faces intimidation as well. After Venezuela’s assault, Trump warned President Gustavo Petro via social media to “watch his ass.” Asked about invasion, Trump replied, “It sounds good to me,” linking Colombia to drug trafficking and alliances under his revived “Don-roe Doctrine”—a Monroe-style assertion of U.S. hemispheric supremacy. Panama, about 80 percent Christian, confronts Trump’s demand to reclaim the Panama Canal. He argues the U.S. “built it,” threatens trade disruptions, and hints at military options to retake control.
This doctrine’s trajectory now pierces Europe. Greenland—an autonomous Danish territory with about 95 percent Lutheran Christian population—became Trump’s fixation in late 2025 and early 2026. On “national security” grounds he demanded purchase or strategic control, threatened tariffs against Denmark and Europe, and suggested acquisition “one way or the other” before partially retreating at Davos. Greenland’s prime minister condemned the proposal as “unacceptable” and “disrespectful”; Denmark rejected any sale outright. Canada, roughly 60 percent Christian, faces annexation insinuations tied to Arctic dominance. Thus European Christians in Denmark, Greenland, and Canada confront Trump’s geopolitical pressure directly. Nigerian Christians who celebrate him as protector must answer: how does European Christendom reconcile Trump’s coercion with Christian solidarity?
Within Nigeria itself, Trump’s genocide framing collides with domestic assessments. Polling showed 79 percent Trump approval among Nigerians in 2025, yet Abuja warned against escalation. President Bola Tinubu’s government urged “cooperation not threats,” rejecting genocide claims and attributing violence to banditry, terrorism, poverty, climate stress, and crime affecting all communities. The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs likewise dismissed the genocide label. Northern Muslim leaders stress insurgents kill indiscriminately and welcome U.S. counterterror support without sectarian framing. Critics mock Nigerian Christian Trumpism as “gullible,” comparing Trump to a “new white Jesus” while overlooking local complexities and external geopolitical interests.
The most profound hypocrisy lies in Trump’s unwavering arming of Israel amid assaults affecting Palestinian Christians in Christianity’s birthplace. Gaza’s Holy Family Church—the enclave’s sole Catholic parish—was struck by an Israeli tank shell in July 2025, killing three civilians including two Palestinian Christians. The Latin Patriarchate condemned the strike; Israel claimed accidental shrapnel, disputed by church testimony. Trump had resumed shipments of MK-84 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in January–February 2025 after prior U.S. pauses. Although he phoned Benjamin Netanyahu expressing displeasure, weapons flows continued. The Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius had earlier been bombed while sheltering civilians.
Palestinian Christians—about 45,000–50,000 in the West Bank and a dwindling remnant in Gaza—document sustained pressures: occupation, settlement expansion, settler violence, discriminatory laws, movement restrictions, and attacks on churches. In Taybeh, the West Bank’s last all-Christian village, settlers burned cemeteries, Saint George Church, and homes in July 2025. Jerusalem’s Old City logged over 200 incidents in 2024–2025 involving harassment, vandalism, and assaults on clergy by extremists. Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa described a “coordinated attack” climate driving Christians toward emigration. Checkpoints and permits block access to the Holy Sepulchre; Easter observances from 2023–2025 faced severe police restrictions. Gaza’s war devastated churches and displaced congregations.
Demographic collapse underscores the existential threat: Christians fell from about 10 percent of the population in 1948 to under 2 percent today in historic Palestinian areas. Pizzaballa reports hundreds leaving Bethlehem after renewed conflict; lawyer Dalia Qumsieh warns of “extinction threat.” Kairos Palestine’s 2025 update describes ethnic-cleansing dynamics. Reports cite strikes on church-linked facilities such as Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital and demolitions forcing exodus. Thousands of Christians were displaced during the Israel–Hamas war despite fragile 2025–2026 ceasefires. Trump’s “peace through strength” doctrine—bomb resupply, reconstruction control schemes, unconditional Israeli backing—remains integral to this environment.
Defenders highlight inconsistency critiques: intervention rhetoric in Nigeria versus enablement in Gaza. Israel rejects accusations, citing security threats and economics; Palestinians insist occupation and violence drive their suffering. Palestinian Christians plead for coexistence while confronting extinction pressures. For Nigerian believers venerating Trump, the contradiction is unavoidable: their supposed champion backs policies linked to Christianity’s erosion in its birthplace.
Trump’s record on race intensifies moral dissonance. During Black History Month in February 2026, he posted a Truth Social video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle accompanied by “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” an AI-edited clip alleging 2020 election fraud and portraying Trump as a lion. Posted February 5 and deleted after 12 hours, it provoked outrage. On Air Force One February 6, Trump refused apology, blamed a staffer, and insisted he was “the least racist president.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially called the video “fake,” then attributed it to staff. Senator Tim Scott labeled it “the most racist”; Representative Mike Lawler demanded apology; Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called it “vile.” Barack Obama, in a February 15 interview, condemned the episode as a “clown show” and “troubling.”
Additional controversy surrounds renewed scrutiny of Trump’s past association with Jeffrey Epstein. A debunked 2013 hoax email alleged Trump disparaged Black women; newly publicized Michael Wolff recordings in February 2026 quoted Epstein claiming Trump had affairs with Black women and used slurs—claims Trump denies. Records confirm Trump–Epstein social ties and flights but no criminal charges; Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007.
The pattern is unmistakable. Trump bombs Venezuelans, suffocates Cubans, threatens Mexicans and Colombians, pressures Panamanians, intimidates Danes and Greenlanders, and arms Israeli operations affecting Palestinian Christians—while Nigerian Christians hail him as redeemer. Jesus of Bethlehem taught mercy, solidarity, and humility; Trump’s geopolitics centers domination, extraction, and coercion. Nigerian Christians seeking protection must confront an uncomfortable truth: salvation will not descend from Washington. It must emerge from justice, security reform, and interfaith coexistence within Nigeria itself.
The illusion of Trump as deliverer collapses under the weight of his global record. The unresolved question endures with growing urgency: how many Christian communities worldwide must endure destabilization, displacement, and death under Trump-aligned policies before Nigerian believers abandon the myth?
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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