THE African Union chief said there was no genocide in Nigeria’s north after US President Donald Trump claimed that Christians were being slaughtered by insurgentss and faced an “existential threat”.
News Point Nigeria reports that Trump this month threatened to carry out an armed intervention in Nigeria, saying insurgents were killing “Christians in very large numbers”.
The US leader said Christianity was “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation, adding that if Nigeria does not stem the killings, the United States will attack and “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet”.
Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, chair of the African Union Commission, told a press conference on Thursday in New York that “there is no genocide in northern Nigeria”.
“The complexity of the situation in northern Nigeria should push us to think twice before making such statements,” he added.
Youssouf said, “The first victims of Boko Haram (the most prominent insurgent group in the region) are Muslims, not Christians”.
Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country with 230 million inhabitants, is divided roughly equally between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.
It is the scene of numerous conflicts, including insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.
The Boko Haram insurgency, active since 2009, has killed more than 40,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes, according to UN figures.
