The Christian Association of Nigeria in the 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory, alongside bishops under the aegis of the Ecumenical Synods of Bishops, Archbishops, Apostles, and Senior Clergy, have dismissed the claim by the United States President, Donald Trump, that the US military had ended the killing of Christians in Nigeria.
The clerics described Trump’s claim as misleading, false and detached from the realities on the ground, warning that it could trivialise the country’s persistent security crisis.
Trump, during an event in Washington on Friday, said American intervention in Nigeria played a major role in halting attacks allegedly targeted at Christian communities, particularly in areas affected by insurgency and violent extremist activities.
“As you know, we recently struck Nigeria and largely ended the slaughter of great Christian populations,” the US president said.
He described the situation before the intervention as severe, claiming that thousands of innocent people, including women, children, and the elderly, had been killed in brutal attacks.
“They have a great Christian population. They were being butchered; thousands and thousands of people were being killed, children, women, and old people, just being slaughtered and hacked to death,” he added.
Trump stated that the alleged military action significantly weakened those responsible for the attacks.
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“They know that if they go further, the attack will be far greater and that they don’t want to really get involved anymore so much. We hit them very hard. We knocked out their leader. We knocked out their second leader and their third leader,” the US president said.
Commenting on the claim, the CAN chairman in the 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory, Joseph Hayab, faulted Trump’s assertion, insisting that Nigerians, not only Christians, were still being killed and abducted across several states.
Speaking with Sunday PUNCH on Saturday, Hayab said only victims of insecurity and Christians in Nigeria could determine whether there had been any meaningful improvement in the security situation, stressing that killings and abductions were still occurring across the country.
Hayab described Trump’s statement as a political claim based on misleading information from advisers who did not understand the security situation in Nigeria.
“The right people who should tell whether Trump has succeeded should be Nigerian Christians or Northern Christians, not Trump himself. But probably he is getting his information from the wrong source. I think some of his political claims are not good enough to resolve things.
“Trump should allow the victims to make that confession, not him. The victims are the right people who can tell whether whatever he has done has yielded any success,” he said.
While acknowledging recent US military operations targeting terrorist elements, the CAN chairman said the intervention had not translated into an end to attacks on innocent Nigerians.
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