Rising Jihadist Power in Africa: Trump Issues Ultimatum After ICGER Report
On November 3, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that he had instructed the US Department of War to prepare for “possible action” in Nigeria. “They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” the US president said. In the post, he warned that he might send the military into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” unless the Nigerian government intervened and said that all aid to what he called “the now disgraced country” would be cut.[i]
The ultimatum directly aligns with warnings issued over two weeks ago by ICGER. In a study released on October 14, 2025, titled “A Jihadist Continent: The New Global Threat Taking Over Africa,” ICGER president Dr. Mohammad Walid Youssef warned that “massive demographic upheaval” would strike African nations where Muslim and Christian populations meet. He attributed this potential crisis to “Western negligence and indifference to developments in the Sahel, Sahara, and Central Africa.”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth then replied to the post by writing: “Yes sir. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”[ii]
In his study, Dr. Youssef cautioned that Islamist groups in the Sahel and Sahara are likely to take control of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in the coming years, while also expanding within Nigeria, Chad, Somalia, Benin, and Togo—potentially reaching as far as Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.
He stated that this transformation would enable these groups to operate “from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic,” spanning extensive deserts, bushlands, and challenging terrain.
Dr. Youssef stated: “At that stage, no country in the world, regardless of the number of armies it deploys, will be able to overcome terrorism, even if all nations united as allies.”
He also warned that the main threat could come from a geographical connection among Sahel jihadist groups, al-Shabaab in Somalia, ISIS in Somalia, and the Allied Democratic Forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, forming a continuous arc of militant influence.
He estimated that such a merger would enable jihadist groups to effectively control 8–10 million square kilometers, an area comparable to the size of the United States or Canada, and facilitate free movement from the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden, and Bab al-Mandeb to the Atlantic Ocean.
He observed that these groups would take control of significant economic resources such as gold, diamonds, oil, gas, uranium, and other strategic minerals across the Sahel and Central Africa. He particularly warned that Nigeria’s oil fields Could fall into the hands of Boko Haram and ISIS–West Africa, providing them with revenues comparable to those of entire nations.
Dr. Youssef also warned that a major consequence of this expansion could be ‘massive demographic changes in countries where Muslims and Christians live together, leading to mass atrocities and massacres on the scale of hundreds of thousands.”
[i] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cev18jy21w7o
[ii] Ibid.