Nigeria’s first lady, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, met with United States members of Congress and Donald Trump administration officials last week to press her case that Abuja is protecting Christians, a source familiar with the meetings told AFP on Monday.
The talks came as Mrs Tinubu was in Washington for the National Prayer Breakfast, a yearly gathering of political, business and religious leaders in Washington.
Nigeria is under pressure from the United States over violence in the country that President Donald Trump has said amounts to the “persecution” of Christians — a framing long used by the US religious and political right wing.
Trump called Tinubu “a very respected woman” during his address to the gathering Thursday.
The first lady, a Christian pastor married to Muslim President Bola Tinubu, met with US lawmakers from both parties on Nigeria’s security situation, the source said.
Abuja and independent analysts reject Washington’s framing of the complex, overlapping security crises in the country, noting that armed groups kill both Muslims and Christians, often without distinction.
Nigeria is battling a long-running jihadist insurgency concentrated in its northeast, while non-ideological “bandit” gangs conduct kidnappings for ransom, loot villages and impose taxes on farmers and miners in the northwest.
