Trump Threatens to Invade Resource-rich Nigeria
Yet another story that supports what I reported to you all over the past week or so, that Trump is threatening to invade Nigeria because of it’s resources, not saving Christians. Johnny
Guest post by Kurt Nimmo from Global Research. Reposted with Permission
On the heels of its threat to invade Venezuela, the Trump administration has announced it plans to intervene in oil- and mineral-rich Nigeria, ostensibly in response to an alleged massacre of Christians.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians,” President Trump declared on his Truth social media, “the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities… I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action” against the government of Bola Tinubu.
“If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!” the president continued. “ WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Pete Hegseth, the “Secretary of War” (or conversely, the “CEO of War”), posted to X on November 1.
“The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria—and anywhere—must end immediately. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” he wrote.
Senator Ted Cruz has introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025. It proposes visa restrictions and asset freezes on Nigerian officials enforcing Sharia and blasphemy laws, in response to Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for religious persecution.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar rejected the accusation and said the violence is the result of banditry, terrorism, and farmer-herder clashes between Muslims and Christians. Nigerian president Bola Tinubu went on X and insisted Nigeria safeguards the “freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians” and is committed to working with the United States and international community on the “protection of communities of all faiths.”
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Other Nigerians, however, dispute the claim the violence is religious in nature. A former Nigerian Kaduna Central lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani, said Trump was “misinformed by anarchists, lackeys and apprentices of neocolonialism” seeking to profit from division and discontent. Sani said on X that the killings and kidnappings in Nigeria were not driven by religion.
Religious Violence in Nigeria and West Africa
According to a report published by The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), religious violence in Nigeria resulted in the loss of 55,910 lives over a four-year period, spanning from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2023. These deaths were the result of 9,970 attacks, which encompassed civilian fatalities, deaths of “terror groups,” and casualties among the Nigerian Armed Forces. Among the total number of fatalities, 30,880 were civilians. Approximately 16,769 Christians, 6,235 Muslims, and 154 adherents of traditional African religions lost their lives. The religious affiliations of the remaining 7,722 victims remain unknown.
Fulani herdsmen, who are Sunni Muslim, are said responsible for the majority of the attacks, while “other terrorist groups” (primarily Boko Haram) are responsible for the remainder, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. The Fulani, considered the largest nomadic ethnic group in the world, are largely adherents of Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism that is prominent in west Africa and Sudan, and said to be instrumental in implementing Islamic rule. Faluni jihadism, according to the Human Rights Research Center, is more militant and deadly than that of Boko Harem.
Boko Haram, often described as an offshoot of the Islamic State, was founded by Muhammed Yusuf in 2002 and aims to establish an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria. According to WikiLeaks, a United States cable (June 29, 2009) revealed the CIA predicted Boko Haram would engage in terror attacks in Nigeria two months before the group began its terrorist onslaught.
In 2015, Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, accused the US and Israel of supporting Boko Haram and ISIS.
“I said CIA and the Mossad stand behind these organizations,” Bashir told Euronews.
Bashir made the claim after a video surfaced of ISIS beheading Coptic Christians in Libya. It should be noted Bashir stands accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan.
“We have already been regaled with reports provided by the Wikileaks which identified the US embassy in Nigeria as a forward operating base for wide and far reaching acts of subversion against Nigeria,” Atheling P Reginald Mavengira of African Renaissance News (ARN) noted in 2014. According to the ARN report, AFRICOM (US African Command) planned to establish “Pax Americana” in resource-rich Africa.
“As we stated earlier the goal of AFRICOM is not people but the resources and strategic locations of Africa and its neighborhood. Nigeria is also the biggest economy in mainland Africa and it is slated to become the largest economy in all of Africa by 2030 and it has the youngest population in Africa,” writes Piyush Gupta, an associate editor of TFIGlobal, an Indian opinion and analysis website.
Nigeria: A Bounty of Natural Resources
According to Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the country is one of the most resource-rich nations in the world. It possesses oil and gas, gold, bitumen, coal, iron ore, limestone, lead and zinc, tin, bauxite, and lithium. Since 2013, China has invested over $1.3 billion in Nigeria’s rapidly expanding lithium processing industry. The country’s vast lithium reserves are estimated to be worth over $34 billion. Lithium is crucial for producing batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage systems.
In addition to lithium, China has “secured over $20 billion in investment commitments, focusing on critical sectors such as agriculture, automotive manufacturing, mining, steel production, and energy. These investments are set to boost food security, create jobs, and drive a new wave of industrial development in the country,” notes Solomon Odeniyi, writing for Punch.
China’s investment in Nigeria has alarmed the US.
“China is expanding its approach from a focus on economic influence to greater military and information operations,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin RM Anderson told the US Senate Committee on Armed Services in July.
Anderson warned China’s port-building in Africa may result in a Chinese military base on the Atlantic side of the continent. Earlier this year, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, conducted a diplomatic tour of Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Chad, and Nigeria, and pledged a billion yuan (about $136m) in military aid.
“Nigeria and China have signed a deal to establish a military hardware production facility in Nigeria,” according to the African Leadership Magazine, and “the agreement includes the transfer of advanced defense technology, the establishment of local manufacturing facilities for modern military equipment, and a structured exchange of technical expertise.”
China, ECOWAS, and the Belt and Road Initiative
Nigeria is a founding member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional political and economic union of twelve countries in West Africa. Alan Macleod writes that
“ECOWAS has been fully supported by the United States and Europe, leading many to suspect it is being used as an imperial vehicle to stamp out anti-colonial projects in West Africa.”
Despite the apparent cooperation with neoliberalism and the so-called the Washington Consensus, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar, a member of ECOWAS, argues “common aspirations” in the development of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and a continental free trade area have brought China and Africa closer together.
The BRI, also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, seeks to establish a network of enhanced infrastructure that spans 65 countries, encompassing 60% of the world’s population and approximately a third of its economic output, according to Cary Huang of the SC Johnson College of Business.
In February, the Trump administration announced a plan to implement a series of “big deals” to checkmate China’s Belt and Road Initiative, including the Blue Dot Network (BDN), a project that aims “to promote high-quality infrastructure projects and standards, fostering greater global trade and infrastructure development,” according to AInvest, a financial website. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the Trump administration wants to “reverse” China’s BRI.
Days after Trump was sworn into office, his administration forced Panama to withdraw from China’s massive infrastructure and investment project, a key element of a 2017 memorandum of understanding to participate in the BRI. Secretary of State Rubio warned BRI will “threaten” US economic hegemony and result in China dominating US trading partners. “I think there’s more big deals like that coming under President Trump,” Rubio said.
Rationale for Stealing Natural Resources
In response to Trump’s 15% tariff imposed on Nigerian imports, part of a wide ranging tariff regime levied on 67 countries, Nigerian Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, said in April
“Nigeria must act decisively to diversify its trade partnerships. Strengthening our bilateral relations with China presents tremendous opportunities for growth in trade, investment, and technological cooperation.”
The BRI in Africa and the diversification of trade partnerships at the expense of the United States are the real issue, not the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Unverified “narcoterrorism” in Venezuela and attacks on Nigerian Christians serve as a fig leaf for the Trump administration to rollback BRI and also ensure the continuation of neoliberal domination of trade and access to natural resources.
On more than one occasion, Trump advocated stealing oil from foreign nations. During his first term, he embraced stealing oil from Syria. According to his then Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, the illegal presence of US troops in Syria was to “deny ISIS access to oil revenue.” During an interview with C-Span in 2019, Trump said the United States will remain in Syria and “we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with [Syrian oil] in the future.” In 2013, he said, “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil,” and he went so far as to demand Iraq “repay” the US for the three trillion dollars squandered on the invasion.
Trump has revealed a similar attitude in regard to Venezuela.
“How about we’re buying oil from Venezuela?” Trump said in 2023 during a speech in North Carolina. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would’ve taken it over; we would have gotten all that oil; it would’ve been right next door.”
“Trump revealed that the US strategy, with the collaboration of lackey groups from inside Venezuela, was to seize Venezuelan oil,” argued Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil.
The same rationale applies to Nigeria. The US not only wants a free hand to decide how Nigeria’s vast natural resources will be exploited, it also wants to prevent its main competitor, China, from gaining a foothold in Africa.
During his first term, Trump labeled China as a strategic “competitor.” He accused the Chinese government of maintaining a “repressive vision” and pursuing economic aggression aimed at weakening America. His national strategy asserted that “whether we like it or not, we are engaged in a new era of competition” with Russia and China, two nations he argues “that seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth.” In short, Trump is attempting to prop up what remains a crumbling Bretton Woods international monetary system established in 1944, an exploitative system increasingly rejected by many nations, particularly in the Global South.
On November 3, Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria. Like the proposed invasion of Venezuela, it remains to be seen if Trump is merely bluffing, or if he will, as commander in chief, indeed invade. However, if Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are any indication, military action will turn out to be an expensive and humiliating failure.
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Kurt Nimmo is a journalist, author, and geopolitical analyst, New Mexico, United States. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers observe Nigerien armed forces during Exercise Flintlock in Niger on March 9, 2017. Photo: U.S. Africa Command
