Nigeria discussing security with US after Trump threats

ABUJA - Nigeria is in talks with the United States following President Donald Trump's threats of military intervention over the killing of Christians by jihadists in the country, Nigeria's foreign minister told AFP on Monday.

"What we are discussing is how we can collaborate to tackle security challenges that are in the interest of the entire planet," Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said in an interview in the capital Abuja.

Trump at the start of November said he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Africa's most populous nation because radical Islamists are "killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers".

Asked whether he thought Washington would send the military to strike, Tuggar said: "No, I do not think so."

"Because we continue to talk, and as I said, the discussion has progressed. It's moved on from that."

Trump had said that Christianity was "facing an existential threat" in the west African nation.

The US leader warned that if Nigeria does not stem the killings, the United States will attackand "it will be fast, vicious, and sweet".

Nigeria, home to 230 million inhabitants, is divided roughly equally between a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north.

It is the scene of numerous conflicts, including jihadist insurgencies, which kill both Christians and Muslims, often indiscriminately.

'FALSE NARRATIVES'

"We accept, we admit, we have security challenges due to factors, many of them beyond our control," Tuggar said.

But the foreign minister also argued that the narrative about Christian killings in Nigeria was being fed by misinformation.

"People have been misinformed. There's a drive towards creating these false narratives in order to, I suppose, debilitate Nigeria," he said.

The US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa will hold an open hearing on Thursday to examine Trump's recent redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern over the violation of Christian religiousfreedoms.

"Our hope is that Nigeria will get a fair hearing when they're having their public hearings, instead of just listening to one side," said Tuggar.

He insisted that his government had worked to tackle Nigeria's multiple security crises, including the criminal gangs known locally as bandits.

"What exists is a government that has been fighting insurgency, that has been fighting terrorism in our region," he added.

"Sometimes with a lot of success, sometimes we have setbacks due to exogenous factors, not due to something that we're doing wrong."

Tuggar insisted that if the US or any other country wants to partner Nigeria to help with the security issues, "we more than welcome it".

"But Nigeria and Nigerian security and Nigerian troops, Nigerian military, has to be the one to take the lead," the foreign minister added.

Nigeria has faced a jihadist conflict in the northeast that has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million since it broke out in 2009.

The violence has spilt over into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting the creation of a regional military force to fight the jihadists.