People attend the funeral of a man on April 15 who was killed following an attack by gunmen in the Zike farming community in north-central Nigeria. Samson Omale/AP

US President Donald Trump caused alarm across Nigeria over the weekend when he said he was contemplating military action in Africa’s most populous nation in response to what he claimed was a “mass slaughter” of Christians by Islamist insurgents.

The reality on the ground, experts and analysts say, is a more complex and nuanced one. Both Christians and Muslims — the two main religious groups in the country of more than 230 million people — have been victims of attacks by radical Islamists, they say.

The West African nation has grappled for years with deep-rooted security problems that are driven by various factors, including

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