A possible US military action against terrorists in Nigeria reached an advanced stage after the US military submitted contingency plans following a directive from President Donald Trump to prepare for possible action over a false claim of Christian genocide.

According to the New York Times, the US Africa Command has drawn up and sent its options to the Department of War this week upon the request of Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The news handle reported that U.S. forces are unlikely to be able to end a decades-long insurgency that has claimed lives across sectarian lines in Africa’s most populous country, despite President Trump’s order that the Pentagon prepare to intervene militarily in Nigeria to protect Christians from attack by Islamic militants.

A US military official maintained that the American military cannot do much to quell the violence unless it is willing to start an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style campaign, something that no one appears to be seriously contemplating. But he confirmed that there were some steps available to American war planners that could have limited impact on the militants.

Some of the options involve conducting airstrikes on the few known compounds in northern Nigeria inhabited by militant groups, using American drones like the MQ-9 Reaper and the MQ-1 Predator to attack a few vehicles and even a handful of convoys. And American forces could team up with Nigerian soldiers to raid villages to root out Boko Haram insurgents who have ensconced themselves in rural hamlets in the country’s north.
US defence officials say these were all part of the options that officials with the United States Africa Command drew up this week, to forward to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

A retired Army veteran of the war in Iraq and U.S. Major Gen. Paul D. Eaton have appealed to President Trump to refrain from his earlier threats, warning that any major military operation by the United States would be likely to fail, current and former military officials said.

“It would be a fiasco,” said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army veteran of the war in Iraq and U.S. efforts to counter the insurgency there. The American public had not shown much interest in repeating the Iraq- or Afghanistan-style military campaigns in Nigeria, he noted. Nor had the president, beyond his recent social media posts, he said.

Word was rife that officials at the command, which is based in Stuttgart, Germany, and which, like much of the U.S. military apparatus, has plans for every conceivable contingency, duly dusted off their options for the Sahel and sent them to Washington. The new AFRICOM commander, Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, has a previously scheduled trip to Nigeria in the next month or so, as three defence officials confirmed that the plans from the command had three options — light, medium and heavy — and were intended to be escalatory.

President Donald Trump had sent a strong warning to radical Islamists behind the alleged killings that his country will not stand by while such atrocities continue.
In an X post on Friday, Trump declared that “we stand ready, willing and able to save our Great Christian population around the world!” Trump stated that “Christianity is facing existential threat in Nigeria,” and pronounced Nigeria as a “COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.”

His post read: “Christianity is facing existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN’ — but that is the list of it. When Christians or any such group is slaughtered like is happening in Nigeria (3,100 versus 4,476 Worldwide), something must be done! I am asking Congressman Riley Moore, together with Chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations Committee, to immediately look into this matter, and report back to me. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other countries. We stand ready, willing and able to save our Great Christian population around the world!”