Trump said on social media that 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".

But Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar insisted that the country's constitution did not allow religious persecution, in the first comment by a senior Nigerian government official following Trump's weekend threats.

"It's impossible for there to be a religious persecution that can be supported in any way, shape or form by the government of Nigeria at any level," Tuggar told a press conference in Berlin.

Nigeria has a "constitutional commitment to religious freedom and rule of law", the foreign minister added.

Roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and Muslim-majority north, Nigeria is home to myriad conflicts, which experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.

But claims of Christian "persecution" in Nigeria have found traction online among the US and European right in recent months.

Flanked by his German counterpart Johann Wadephul, Tuggar warned against any attempts to divide Nigeria along religious lines, drawing parallels with civil war-ravaged Sudan.

"What we are trying to make the world understand is that we should not create another Sudan," he said.

"We've seen what has happened with Sudan with agitations for the partitioning of Sudan based on religion, based on tribal sentiments and you can see the crisis even when the partitioning was done according to religion or according to tribe," Tuggar said.

- Muslim victims too -

Trump has not suggested any division of Nigeria along religious lines, but said without evidence that "thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter".

Ikemesit Effiong, an analyst with the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence consultancy, suggests that Nigeria's fears of partitioning are informed by history, with several major former British colonies having experienced "violent partitions and secessions".

"Nigeria is actually sensitive to the fact that while our diversity can be a strength, it can also be a lever of division, of violence and eventually of partition," he told AFP.

Nigeria has denied that Christians have been targeted by jihadist attacks more than people from other faiths.

Before Trump's threat, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu had said that religious tolerance was "a core tenet of our collective identity".

Claims of a "Christian genocide" have been pushed in recent years by separatist groups in the southeast.

US-based firm Moran Global Strategies has been lobbying on behalf of separatists this year, advising congressional staff on what it said was Christian "persecution", according to lobbying disclosures.

The word "genocide" has also been used by some individuals in the central parts of the country who are frustrated by the escalating violence there, though typically in ethnic, not religious terms.

Nigeria also faces a long-running jihadist conflict in its northeast and "bandit" gangs in the northwest who stage kidnappings, village raids and killings.

The north's population is mostly Muslim -- meaning most of the victims are, too.

Nigeria's newly appointed chief of defence staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, told reporters on Monday that "there are no Christians being persecuted in Nigeria".

Other analysts suggest that Washington's amped-up rhetoric could be related to Abuja rejecting demands to accept non-Nigerian deportees expelled from the United States as part of Trump's immigration crackdown.

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