Award-winning rapper Nicki Minaj has publicly backed President Donald Trump’s accusations that Christians face persecution in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria, Christians are in the spotlight,” Minaj said Tuesday at an event hosted by the United States, adding: “Churches have been burned, families have been destroyed… simply because of how they pray.”
Analysts say jihadists and other armed groups have waged campaigns of violence that affect all communities in the West African nation, regardless of their background or beliefs.
Just this week, two people were killed in an attack on a church, while a group of 25 girls, who the BBC says are Muslim, were kidnapped from a school.
Two of the girls later managed to escape their kidnappers. The attack on the secondary school in the northwestern state of Kebbi also killed a teacher and a security guard, both Muslims.
Earlier this month, Trump said he would send troops to Nigeria “with guns” if his government “continues to allow the murder of Christians.”
Minaj, whose real name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, told an event hosted by the US embassy to the UN in New York that calling for the protection of Christians in Nigeria “is not about taking sides or dividing people… but about uniting humanity.”
“It’s about confronting injustice. It’s about what I’ve always stood for,” he added.
The 42-year-old rapper, who has previously spoken of her Christian faith, thanked Trump for “prioritizing this issue and for his leadership.”
The Nigerian government has rejected these claims, calling them “a serious misrepresentation of reality.”
One official stated that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology: Muslims, Christians and those without faith alike.”
Other groups monitoring political violence in Nigeria say most victims of jihadist groups are Muslims.
The country’s 220 million people are roughly evenly divided between followers of the two religions, with Muslims being the majority in the north, where most attacks take place.
On Wednesday, Nigerian police in the southwestern state of Kwara confirmed a deadly attack on a church in the town of Eruku, where gunmen opened fire on worshipers the previous day, killing two people and kidnapping several others.
Local media say gunmen, identified by residents as bandits, stormed Christ Apostolic Church during a late-night program on Tuesday night, shot the pastor and held worshipers at gunpoint.
Images and short video clips, believed to come from the church’s CCTV cameras, have been widely circulated online, showing terrified parishioners scrambling for safety, including an elderly woman seen desperately trying to escape the gunmen.
On Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu confirmed that jihadist forces had killed a senior army officer, after he was captured in an ambush.
The Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) said on Monday that its fighters had killed Brigadier General Musa Uba in the northeastern state of Borno.
The Nigerian military had previously denied that the officer had been kidnapped and murdered.
The latest attacks have sparked frustration and anger across Nigeria, with many lamenting what they see as an endless wave of insecurity affecting rural communities, churches, schools and major transportation routes.
Minaj described Nigeria as “a beautiful nation with deep faith traditions” and even acknowledged the “beautiful Barbz” – her fans – in the West African country.
US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz thanked the rapper for “leveraging her massive platform to highlight atrocities against Christians in Nigeria.”
For months, right-wing activists and politicians in Washington have been alleging that Islamist militants were systematically attacking Christians in Nigeria.
But the BBC has found that some of the data it relies on to reach this conclusion is difficult to verify.
Deadly disputes also tend to be over vital resources such as land and water or fueled by inter-ethnic tensions, rather than religion, analysts say.
