Former aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode on Sunday issued a blistering response to a post by U.S. President Donald Trump that ordered the U.S. Department of War to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria.
In a message on X, Mr. Fani-Kayode described President. Trump as a “deranged & sociopathic megalomaniac & tyrant” and accused him of threatening Nigeria with “violence, military action and invasion.”
He said the U.S. leader’s comments showed a brazen readiness to treat Nigeria as a subordinate and warned that Nigerians would resist any foreign incursion.
“Imagine a deranged & sociopathic megalomaniac & tyrant… threatening our country with violence, military action and invasion. What a nerve!” Fani-Kayode wrote
Responding to concerns from a friend about President Trump’s remarks, the former minister said Nigerians would not flee but would stand their ground.
“We shall not leave the country but we will fight it out with them,” he declared, condemning what he called complacency and “cowardice” in the face of foreign intimidation.
Fani-Kayode also lashed out at President. Trump’s international alliances, linking him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom the former minister likened to a “modern-day Hitler” and accusing the U.S. president of ignoring atrocities in Sudan while attempting to brand Nigeria with a “genocide” label.
The former minister said President Trump was attempting to “provoke a crisis” by portraying Nigerians as “killers of Christians,” a charge that, he argued, sought to justify foreign intervention.
Mr. Fani-Kayode’s remarks followed a post by President Trump on Truth Social on Saturday in which the former U.S. president accused the Nigerian government of turning a blind eye to what he described as the “genocide of Christians” and instructed the U.S. War Department to prepare for possible action.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, 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,” Mr. Trump wrote.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet…”
Trump also warned that Washington would halt all aid to Nigeria if attacks on Christians continued.
The exchange has further heightened tensions between critics of foreign intervention and those calling for international pressure over reported communal and religious violence.
Tributes and condemnation have been swift on social media, where the debate over sovereignty, human rights and the appropriate international response to violence in Nigeria continues to run hot.
