Nigerian Catholics welcomed US President Donald Trump’s decision to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern over the weekend, even as Trump’s rhetoric became more bellicose on Saturday.

Trump told military leaders on Saturday to “prepare for possible action” in Nigeria over the ongoing violence against Christians in the country, which has claimed scores of thousands of lives and seen many thousands of people displaced since 2009, driven by the Islamic Boko Haram insurgency, the so-called Islamic State West Africa Province, and ethnic Fulani raiders. All of those groups also attack Muslims who reject their ideologies and target people devoted to indigenous religious practices.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “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,” Trump wrote on social media.

“If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!” Trump added.

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The Country of Particular Concern designation is used by the United States to identify any country deemed by the US Secretary of State to practice “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.”

The United States designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern in December of 2020, at the end of Trump’s first term in office. The Biden administration removed Nigeria from the CPC list on November 17, 2021, one day after the then-US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Nigeria.

Fr. Moses Iorapuu, who is Director of Communications and parish priest at Holy Ghost parish in Makurdi, Nigeria, where he is also editor of the diocesan Catholic Star newspaper, was among those lauding the US president’s decision to re-designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern.

“The joy and strength I feel inside cannot be vocalized,” Iorapuu told Crux, and cast the US President in the same light as the Biblical Moses who freed his people from Egypt.

“The glory goes to God, who has used President Trump as the Moses who from nowhere appeared at the palace of Pharaoh to set his people free,”Iorapuu told Crux.

Iorapuu said it was a great relief, given that recent meetings at the Vatican ended with Nigeria’s Christians feeling “let down by the hierarchy of the Church.”

During the October 12 launch of Aid to the Church in Need’s Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto Diocese in Nigeria surprised many when he failed to denounce the treatment of Christians in Nigeria.

Kukah is known for his acerbic criticism of the failure of Nigeria to protect Christians. Instead, Kukah argued that all Nigerians faced insecurity due to a weak state. The Nigerian cleric also argued against redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern – something for which observers and lawmakers in the US had been pushing for some time – explaining that it would harm interreligious dialogue and efforts the administration of Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is making to foster freedom of worship.

RELATED: Nigerian officials blast US lawmakers over claims of Christian persecution in Nigeria

Speaking on the sidelines of the ACN report launch last month, Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin acknowledged the suffering of Nigerian Christians but said the situation is “not a religious conflict, but rather more a social one, for example, disputes between herders and farmers.”

“Many Nigerians had given up hope of anything spectacular happening on the international scene in favor of the persecuted Church, following the imbroglio that ensued after the meetings in Rome,” Iorapuu told Crux.

“We didn’t see this coming,”Iorapuu said. “We have been praying for peace, for liberation, for the protection of life and property,” he also said.

Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety, said Trump’s decision have received the news with a strong measure of joy and great relief.

“As a matter of fact, across the social media world, within and outside the country, it was as if the lovers of religious freedom have won a world cup,” he told Crux. “It was a huge relief for those fighting for religious freedom in Nigeria,” he also said, noting how the change doesn’t only benefit Christians, but also benefits moderate Muslims and people who practice indigenous religious traditions, as well.

Umeagbalasi – a criminologist by training – suggested that ensuring religious liberty and general security in Nigeria also means fostering security globally. He warned of catastrophic consequences if Nigeria were to explode from ethno-religious conflict.

For a country of some 238 million people, the humanitarian consequences of such a conflict could be “very difficult to manage,” he said.