Award-winning rapper Nicki Minaj has publicly backed President Donald Trump’s allegations that Christians face persecution in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted,” Minaj said on Tuesday at an event organised by the US, adding: “Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart… simply because of how they pray.”
It follows recent threats by Trump to send troops into Nigeria “guns a-blazing” if its government “continues to allow the killing of Christians”.
Analysts say there is no evidence that Christians have been specifically targeted in Nigeria.
Jihadists and other armed groups have waged campaigns of violence that affect all communities in the West African nation, regardless of background or belief.
This is a point that the Nigerian government has also repeatedly made since Trump made his comments.
Minaj, whose real name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, said calling for the protection of Christians in Nigeria was “not about taking sides or dividing people… but about uniting humanity”.
“This is about standing up in the face of injustice. It’s about what I’ve always stood for,” she added while standing alongside the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz.
The 42-year-old rapper thanked Trump for “prioritizing this issue and for his leadership”.
The Nigeria government has pushed back on these claims, describing them as “a gross misrepresentation of reality”.
It did not deny that there was deadly violence in the country. But officials said that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike”.
Other groups monitoring political violence in Nigeria say the number of Christians who have been killed is far lower, and say most victims of the jihadist groups are Muslims.
The country’s 220 million people are roughly evenly split between followers of the two religions, with Muslims in the majority in the north, where most attacks take place.
Minaj described Nigeria as “a beautiful nation with deep faith traditions” and even acknowledged the “beautiful Barbz” – her fans – in the West African country.
Waltz thanked the rapper for “leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria”.
On Wednesday, Nigeria police in south-western Kwara state 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 abducting several others.
Local media say armed men, identified by residents as bandits, stormed the Christ Apostolic Church during an evening programme on Tuesday evening, shooting the pastor and rounding up worshipers at gunpoint.
Images and short video clips – believed to be from the church’s CCTV cameras – have circulated widely online, showing terrified worshipers scrambling for safety, including an elderly woman seen desperately trying to escape the gunmen.
For months, right-wing campaigners and politicians in Washington have been alleging that Islamist militants were systematically targeting Christians in Nigeria.
Deadly disputes are also often over vital resources like land and water or fuelled by inter-ethnic tensions, rather than religion, say analysts.
Minaj previously namechecked her fanbase, known as the “Barbz”, as a reason for her intervention, saying online: “The Barbz & I will never stand down in the face of injustice. We’ve been given our influence by God. There must be a bigger purpose.”
Last year she publicly revealed that despite moving from her native Trinidad to New York at an early age, she still does not have US citizenship.
Her appearance at the UN on Tuesday is her highest-profile political intervention to date.
She made headlines during the pandemic for sharing disinformation about side-effects of the Covid vaccine – claiming that when a friend of her cousin had the jab, it caused his testicles to swell up and he became impotent.
“His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding,” Minaj wrote online.
Her comments were criticised by UK’s chief medical officer at the time, and then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson also commented, joking: “I am not as familiar with the works of Nicki Minaj as I probably should be.”
In recent months, her years-long feud with fellow New York rapper Cardi B escalated to them trading insults about each others’ careers and family members.
Additional reporting by BBC’s Chris Ewokor in Abuja
