Senior Pastor of Guiding Light Assembly, Wale Adefarasin, has questioned what he described as the United States’ sudden concern for Christians in Nigeria, following comments by former US President Donald Trump about alleged religious persecution in the country.
Trump had last weekend redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern”, a classification under US law for nations accused of violating religious freedom. In a statement issued on Friday, he claimed that Nigeria was witnessing a “Christian genocide” and accused the government of failing to protect Christians from attacks by what he called “Islamic terrorists.”
He went further to issue a threat, saying: “The USA 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 killing Christians.”
Trump’s remarks suggested the possibility of direct US military intervention in Nigeria, one of Washington’s major allies in Africa.
Pete Hegseth, the United States Secretary of War, also said his department was preparing for possible military action if the Nigerian government failed to stop what he called the “killing of innocent Christians” in the country.
Reacting in a video that went viral on Monday, Pastor Adefarasin criticised the Western framing of Nigeria’s security issues as a campaign of Christian genocide, saying such portrayals were misleading and exaggerated.
“For 40 years that I have been a Christian, there have been killings in southern Kaduna, killings on the plateau, there have been riots,” he said.
“Sometimes, I think it was in France, an image of Prophet Muhammad was defaced. Who remembers that? And as a result of that, there were killings of Christians in Nigeria.”
He noted that while the attacks on Christians in some regions were tragic and condemnable, they were not new occurrences and should not be presented as a recent, coordinated effort to wipe out Christians.
“It’s nothing new. It doesn’t amount to genocide. The way the West are talking about it, it’s as if a Christian steps on the street, his head will be blown off,” Adefarasin said.
The cleric, who is the older brother of Pastor Paul Adefarasin of House on the Rock Church, also questioned the motives behind the renewed Western interest in Nigeria, suggesting it might be driven more by economic and geopolitical interests than by genuine concern for religious freedom.
“I’m trying to understand this sudden love for Christians. Is it because we now have one of the largest refineries in the world and no longer have to ship raw materials abroad and bring the finished products? Or is it because of the 21st-century minerals that we now have in our earth, that are used to generate nuclear power for electric vehicles?” he asked.
