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.”

The US leader had said that Christianity was “facing an existential threat” in the west African nation, warning that if Nigeria does not stem the killings, the United States will attack and “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. (AFP)