The Fear of Selling Arms to Nigeria by the US

By Alexander Ekemenah, Chief Analyst, NEXTMONEY

Summary

The reluctance or refusal of the United States Government to sell arms to Nigeria (in this case AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter and its appurtenances) goes far beyond the concerns raised by the United States Government over human rights issues and record of Nigeria. This, however, has been reason often cited for rejecting the request for arms from the US by Nigeriain recent times.

The refusal to sell arms to Nigeria is historical, traceable to the early independence years, to the period of the Nigerian Civil War to be specific. At that time, the USG anchored its refusal to sell arms to Nigeria on the principle and policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Nigeria. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union then, Britain, France and others did not hesitate to sell arms to Nigeria with which it was able to crush the Biafran secessionist bid then.

That aforementioned immediate post-independence policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Nigeria has, however, evolved over time and space to now include serious concerns over human rights records of various regimes in Nigeria. The concerns seem to increase from one regime to another. The successive military regimes gave rise to human rights violations of the most egregious proportions. This has also unfortunately involved civilian regimes under democratic dispensation during the Second Republic (1979-83) and the Fourth Republic (since 1999 to date). Thus there is no doubt that Nigeria has poor human rights record and the fear is quite legitimate that selling sophisticated arms to Nigeria could further deepen or aggravate the situation especially when the country is in grip of worst insecurity in decades sign-posted by Boko Haram insurgency and banditry, the types that have never been witnessed in Nigeria’s political history.

But Nigeria is not the worst human rights violator or offender either in Africa or in the world. Nigeria’s human rights record paled into insignificance when placed side-by-side with the historic scale and mind-boggling empirical cases such as Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Iran, South Africa (during the apartheid era), Uganda, or China, etc. Yet these countries received US arms at one point or the other before they exited their poor human rights records – with the exception of China. Thus it can be seen clearly that the USG’s concern over human rights record in Nigeria is a cover for some other reasons not publicly stated yet. It is imperative to find out these other reasons. This is the sole objective of this research paper.

The Background

The latest refusal to sell arms to Nigeria (shortly after shipping six A-29 Super Tucano combat aircrafts to Nigeria in late July 2021) may not be understood in its full scope without placing it in historical context. And this history dates back to the early independence years especially when Nigeria encountered the first existential challenge to its corporate existence. That was when the Civil War broke out in 1967 between “Nigeria” and “Biafra”.

The Civil War provided the first test or case study of the refusal of the United States Government to sell arms to Nigeria. The predominant argument then was that the USG wanted to avoid interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country like Nigeria – of course not minding the fact that it has been interfering in the internal affairs of other countries like Vietnam that later dragged the US into that tragic war.

This historical dirigisme of US refusal to sell arms toNigeria can be gleaned from “Information Memorandum From the Western Africa Country Director, Bureau of African Affairs (Melbourne) to the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (Palmer)” dated April 18, 1968.¹

From this Memorandum the USG simply refused to sell arms to Nigeria. Of course, there were robust debateswithin the USG circles about the propriety or impropriety of selling arms to Nigeria to help crush Biafra. At the end of the day, no arms were ever sold to Nigeria during this time.

According to the Memorandum, questions were raised about “some basic assumptions which went into the formulation of U.S. policy toward Nigeria in 1967. It also questions the policy itself and how it was carried out, concluding that “much of the damage to our position (in Nigeria) during 1967 could have been avoided.”²

Behind [the] policy has been: (1) a determination not to interfere in the internal affairs of Nigeria; (2) a desire to promote a peaceful, and hence more durable, resolution of the conflict between Biafra and the FMG; (3) a reluctance to follow any course which might lead to an increase in our international commitments; and (4) a desire to maintain the best possible relationships with all the major ethnic groups in Nigeria, particularly those which might have emerged as independent states. This policy of non-involvement, especially as regards arms sales to the FMG has been consistent with Congressional sentiment as expressed in foreign aid hearings and such legislative acts as the Conte-Long and Symington Amendments.³

The hands-off attitude of the United States was of course strongly objected to by the FMG. The FMG tended to disregard the fact that we considered it to be the only legal government in Nigeria. It also did not appreciate fully that the U.S. still intended to make a positive economic contribution to Nigeria so long as that did not mean taking sides in the civil war. Most of all, the FMG greatly resented the U.S. refusal to license the sale of arms and the U.S. statement of August 21, 1967, deploring its purchase of Soviet arms. Given these U.S. actions, which stemmed from our policy, it is doubtful whether much, if any, of the deterioration of our relations with the FMG in 1967 could have been prevented. This deterioration has to be weighed against our avoidance of the risks of intervention in Nigeria’s internal affairs, our demonstration to other Africans of our desire to avoid big power interference in the affairs of African states, and of not compromising our aid program with Congress.⁴

Four major reasons for our policy of non-involvement in the Nigerian conflict are discussed below, as well as the following comments on certain aspects of that policy: the refusal to sell arms to the FMG; the U.S. statements on arms sales to the FMG; and, our even-handed approach to the conflict between the FMG and “Biafra”.⁵

To some extent, “non-involvement” is a misnomer but it has been used to describe our policy for the lack of a better word. Recognition of the FMG and refusal to recognize “Biafra,” continuation of the AID program in the West and North, urging of negotiations, and even the refusal to supply arms are all forms of involvement. But the real issue was whether the USG was right in trying to minimize its role through its policy of non-involvement and especially in preventing in so far as possible U.S. arms reaching either side.⁶

A decision to override the generally applicable principle of non-interference in the case of Nigeria would have required very strong justification in the Department, to Congress and to the American people. Our vital interests were not threatened by the “Biafra” secession. We were not being requested to intervene in behalf of a friendly government which an internal minority, terrorist or otherwise, threatened to take over. Nor were we requested to help combat external aggression or an internal revolt abetted by external assistance. Involvement on the FMG’s side would have needlessly antagonized those opposed to U.S., Soviet, and other foreign interference in Africa. It would have set a precedent to which other African nations would have referred when, in analogous or not so similar straits, they too wanted to enlist us in their cause.⁷

Prior to “Biafran” secession, the U.S. attempted to persuade both sides to negotiate their differences and to reach agreement on an advantageous form of political association. Unless the FMG and the Ibos became reconciled there was little prospect for stability and economic growth in Nigeria. After the civil war broke out, we continued to urge a negotiated settlement. Now, while sticking to this line in anticipation of an FMG victory, we are urging national reconciliation and magnanimous treatment of the Ibos on the Federal Government. A negotiated settlement before secession did seem possible, but we could not have worked for it with both sides if we had vigorously supported the FMG. It is difficult to see how selling arms to the FMG, for example, could have helped influence it toward a peaceful solution of its differences with the East. On the contrary, it might have had the opposite effect by appearing to condone efforts for a military solution. Now that the civil war is in progress, it is also difficult to see how U.S. material support for the FMG’s prosecution of the war effort could help contribute to a negotiated settlement or could help moderate FMG goals and action in such a manner as to lead to national reconciliation.⁸

The possibility that the United States would be drawn into an ever-increasing role militarily and politically in Nigeria did not have to be a probability to make us wary of granting export licenses for arms to the Federal Government of Nigeria. Wholehearted support of the FMG would have required risks we were not prepared to take given our limited military and economic resources and our commitments elsewhere. Moreover, the United States has always preferred to let the British carry the major burden in Nigeria—both militarily and economically. To substitute for them could have increased the load on us with no net gain to Nigeria. These arguments are particularly applicable over the long run.⁹

A corollary to maintaining the best possible relationship with whatever political entities might come to the fore in Nigeria was retaining American influence in Nigeria and with the Ibos, in order to protect or further our interests there. Although this was only one of the factors behind the Department’s desire not to become enmeshed in the civil war, it had obvious advantages, especially when it appeared that the Biafrans might achieve independence. As late as mid-May 1967, reports from the field were reinforcing the Washington assessment that the Yorubas under Awolowo might secede from the FMG should the East decide to pull out of the Nigerian federation. It was predicted that this event would lead, perhaps after an interval of chaos, to the establishment of three or four independent Nigerian states. Although this danger has ultimately subsided, it was real and could not be ignored. We do not believe that this danger was overrated or unduly influenced our policy.¹⁰

In 1967 the Department may have underrated the strength and cohesion of the Federal military. However, as long as it appeared that the West and North might not hold together within the FMG (i.e. until the early summer of 1967), an evaluation of the comparative strength of the Federal and “Biafran” armies was only of secondary importance.¹¹

In August 1967, soon after the outbreak of fighting, the Department, while not considering stalemate impossible, began to appreciate that the FMG military was much stronger than the “Biafrans” and by the year’s end had come to the view that FMG victory was probably inevitable. Yet our basic policy with respect to the Nigerian conflict—non-interference beyond encouraging both sides to negotiate a peaceful settlement—was not changed because that policy was not determined by our estimates of FMG military strength.¹²

A desire to protect our interests in “Biafra” did not lead to a pro-“Biafran” and anti-FMG attitude, but an attitude of relative impartiality with respect to the conflict between the two. Ojukwu was told many times that the U.S. would not support his secessionist effort. Unfortunately, without abandoning our policy of non-involvement, there was no way to eliminate entirely any wishful thinking that the U.S. might eventually aid the Ibos. Even had we embraced the Federal Government more warmly, however, it is extremely doubtful that Ojukwu and the Ibos would have changed their minds on secession.¹³

An additional consideration on our attitude of relative impartiality toward the FMG and “Biafra” is relevant. While sentiment, wherever it is found, does becloud policy, a natural repugnance against taking sides in a struggle between two friendly parties is not purely sentimental or unreasonable. Nor is a refusal to take sides unreasonable for having taken into account the fact that neither adversary has a markedly better case to justify its actions than the other. While we could not expect the FMG to welcome our policy of non-involvement, we could have expected them to respect the motives behind it and not require that the sole, or even chief, criteria of friendship should have been the willingness to license arms sales, declare ourselves unequivocally for Lagos and come out against its eastern opponents. Both General Gowon and Foreign Affairs Commissioner Arikpo have stated that the FMG has come to understand the consistency of our position.¹⁴

The principal reason the USG gave for not responding to the FMG request to permit it to buy arms from U.S. sources was put forth in an Aide-Memoire given Ambassador Martins on July 3, 1967: the USG wished to maintain its position of non-intervention in Nigeria’s internal affairs. This reasoning was also behind the earlier denial of the request for 106mm recoilless rifle ammunition. The amount of ammunition requested in that instance was small and military confrontation with the East was only emerging as a possibility. However, the U.S. did not want to be wooed by the FMG into adopting an arms policy that was a little bit pregnant. While the adverse effects of refusing to supply follow-on ammunition for the recoilless rifles we had previously sold the FMG had to be considered, they did not outweigh other factors in the scales. It is questionable whether governments should reasonably expect nations supplying them with arms to maintain follow-on supplies when it is no longer in their interest to do so.¹⁵

The refusal to permit the sale of U.S. arms to Nigeria, first the 106mm ammunition, and later jet aircraft, defense boats and anti-aircraft guns, was probably the biggest single irritant in our relations with that country, but given our basic policy was inevitable.¹⁶

The FMG resentment over the Department’s press statement concerning the FMG request to buy arms in the United States was of less significance and is likely to be a more ephemeral irritant in our relations with the FMG than the refusal to sell arms. However, had it been shorter, had the term “military assistance” not been uttered inadvertently, and had the press not generated pressure for an early statement, it might have been possible for information on the arms request to have been released to the public in a manner less apt to offend the FMG.¹⁷

The FMG, playing its own domestic politics, was apparently only too glad to seize upon the phrasing of our statement and twist it so as to use the United States as a scapegoat for its decision to buy Soviet arms. It cannot be forgotten that Gowon over Memorial Day weekend 1967 gave a virtual 72-hour decision ultimatum to the USG in seeking its approval for export licenses if he obtained aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, and patrol boats in the U.S. This also had the earmarks, with Ogbu then in Moscow, of an effort planned to justify domestically the obtention of such material from the USSR. The U.S. statement on Soviet arms sales to the FMG has been of value in calling to the attention of Nigerian leaders to our views concerning Soviet arms supplies, making clear what our reaction is likely to be should they mortgage themselves to the Soviet Union. It was, however, designed to call the Soviet intervention to the attention of other African states and at the same time clarify our position to Congress and the American public.¹⁸

It is highly doubtful whether consulting with the Nigerians prior to issuing the declaration would have softened their reaction. Indeed, our refusal to make alterations in the text to meet FMG objections could have provoked greater FMG resentment. Again, however, pressures in Washington may have resulted in a less ideal statement than would otherwise have been possible.¹⁹

There is little basis for criticizing the purport of the declarations we made concerning FMG arms procurement. It was the purport, not the manner, of those statements which has caused the far greater portion of the deterioration of our relations with the FMG.²⁰

Our policy on the Nigerian civil war was based in part (1) on recognition that the East was not totally at fault in its conflict with the FMG; (2) on the political advantage which might be harvested at a late date if we retained the goodwill of all political entities likely to become independent; and (3) on encouraging FMG moderation. This called for an even-handed approach in our treatment of the two belligerents on other matters. Thus, we have been careful not to give all-out vocal support to the FMG, although we have firmly declared we sympathize with its desire to maintain Nigerian unity. We have particularly refrained from giving any endorsement to the FMG conduct of the war. At the same time, we attempted to retain our aid program in Eastern Nigeria as long as possible. The cost of these and other attempts at even-handedness seems bearable in the light of the difficulties we might have encountered had we lined up with the Federal Government only to see it disintegrate and “Biafra” establish its independence.²¹

In this connection, it is especially important not to confuse the damage to our relations with the FMG caused by the refusal to agree to licensing sales of arms with the relatively minor harm done by our other attempts to maintain an un-antagonistic position with respect to the Ibos. In our relations with the FMG the refusal of arms sales licenses was damaging but unavoidable. The attempt at even-handedness, in so far as it went beyond our arms policy, was avoidable but much less damaging. It was worth pursuing in view of other considerations—principally maintaining our position in “Biafra,” reinforcing our posture of non-intervention and, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, trying to use influence with both sides to induce them to negotiate their differences. These considerations were in harmony with Congressional and public sentiment.²²

The Department of State has done everything it could to discourage U.S. citizens from aiding “Biafra” and to keep U.S. manufactured arms and aircraft out of “Biafran” hands. Our legal authority has been severely limited, but there are many documented instances where we have headed off confirmed or probable arms and aircraft sales to “Biafra” by refusing licenses. We have tried to convince American citizens to cease trafficking in arms. We have used every legal means available to discourage them. This is evidenced (1) by our efforts to have the licenses of certain individuals revoked when they violated FAA regulations in connection with their illicit arms deliveries, and (2) by our cooperation with Maltese authorities who impounded an illegally registered aircraft used in the “Biafran airlift.” We believe that the approach and content of our policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Nigeria have not done irrevocable damage to the Western position in Nigeria. It can be argued that over the long run the effect might be salutary. For a limited and temporary setback in our relations, we think we have avoided the many risks of involvement and perhaps caused increasing appreciation among African nations for our efforts to minimize big power intervention on that continent. We believe we have also avoided the possibility of compromising our ongoing AID program with Congress.^{23, 24}

Looking at the above submissions, the question arises as to whether there has been any fundamental attitudinal or altitudinal change on the part of the United States Government towards Nigeria in the midst of contemporary security challenges to its sovereign and corporate existence over the years.

It is important to note that this was documented as far as back as 1968, i.e. 53 years ago even before the end of the Civil War in early 1970. This only showed that the Americans were thinking far ahead of time and/or looking deep into the future like Nostradamus, looking into the crystal ball of what fate awaits Nigeria in the 2020s. The Americans have seen clearly the problems Nigeria is battling with today. And their decisions have been taken more than 50 years ago. Nobody can tell what they are already thinking for the next 50 years from now.

But more than 50 years after the above submissions were made, Nigeria is yet to settle its nationality problems. Governance has become predatory as the nation is surrounded and held captive by extractive institutions of governance, stalling upward development in the process. Security challenges have mushroomed across the length and breadth of the country. The security agencies, corroded by stupefying corruption and all sort of malfeasances, are panting, gasping for breath like fish out of water, trying to curb or crush the various agents of insecurity. The question has even arisen as to whether the security agencies, as they are structured, are ever sincere at all in curtailing the spiraling insecurity in the first place or are capable of doing so at all in the second place. This is because the anti-insurgency war has become a lucrative business franchise with which the top echelon commanders engage in primitive accumulation of wealth to the detriment of the security and properties of the citizens and even the State itself.

“Biafran” secessionist agitations in the South east,spearheaded by Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), have erupted all over again with casualties on both sides of the conflicts i.e. between the agitators and the security agents the latter sent by the Nigerian State/Federal Government to put down the agitations. Worst still, the Yorubas in the South west have also joined the bandwagon of self-determination movements/secessionist bids. This is not a drop of water in the hot fry pan that is expected to fizzle away quickly but areal seismic movement that shakes up the tectonic plates of the sovereign foundation of the country and moves them of alignment with each other. This is as a result of the cumulative effects of the calamitous failure of governance by the Nigerian State in all its ramifications, an indictment of the Nigerian ruling elite in its failure to unite the country, to manage its complex diversity, to harness the talents of the people and channel them towards progress rather than ethnic irredentism and jingoism.

What can one possibly venture to say is the current secret thinking of the American Establishment towards Nigeria now? Has the American thinking radically or fundamentally departed from what are stated above? It is probably hard to tell. But it is not far-fetched to speculate that the Americans have become edgy or even fed up with the continuous shenanigans going on Nigeria, with its insufferable leadership, with the third-rate statecraft in Nigeria presented or represented by the current administration in the country.

The US has largely been ambivalent towards Nigeria in recent years especially from the time of Goodluck Jonathan-led administration till the present time. The ambivalence has even gone from bad to worse under the present administration in the country.²⁵The American Government seems to be caught between supporting a State with its questionable character and two ethnic groups (the Igbos and the Yorubas) that are some of the most educated and sophisticated middle-class intelligentsias among the black people on earth.

Taking a cue from the picturesque presented by Biden’s White House where three Nigerians are currently serving in high profile capacity, one can also speculate that the Americans are serving notice to the Nigerian ruling elite that they are watching the degradation of human capital in Nigeria. They are therefore romancing the Southern intelligentsia, not only for intellectual and cultural purposes but also for “secret” political reasons. It is not just a matter of spotting talents in terms of high academic credentials. But it is a matter of choosing the right talents i.e. pitching one’s tent in the right camp. Situated in the geopolitical context of Nigeria today, it is evident that the mismanagement of human capital in Nigeria has left the North short-changing itself on the world stage, on the American stage to be specific. The very ethnic groups being punched hither and tither are excelling in the Diaspora to the point where they are winning local elections and are being integrated in the Establishments not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom. This speaks volume for the incapacity of the Nigerian State to acknowledge and honour its talents and do the needful by them.

Taking a critical look at the corpus of reasons cited for avoidance of interference in the exclusively internal affairs of Nigeria by the USG in the mid-60s, it is clear that one of the reasons was “the desire to maintain the best possible relationships with all the major ethnic groups in Nigeria, particularly those which might have emerged as independent states. This policy of non-involvement, especially as regards arms sales to the FMG has been consistent with Congressional sentiment as expressed in foreign aid hearings and such legislative acts as the Conte-Long and Symington Amendments.” This was a two-pronged policy drive. First is the strategic thinking of the US policy makers in which inference can be drawn about the likelihood that exist that some of the existing ethnic groups in the country might still emerge as independent states. Such strategic thinking, indeed a very far-sighted one, underpinned the Congressional sentiment which in turn undergirded the legislative acts (Conte-Long and Symington Amendments) which forbade selling arms to countries such as Nigeria that has already fallen into the grip of internal security crisis so as to avoid escalating the crisis situation, a situation that still exist till date. This was the second prong of the policy. So the US reluctance to sell arms to Nigeria under such situation was a very dynamic and fluid situation that should be understood in the context of the complex diversity nature of the security crisis in Nigeria.

It can also be speculated upon that another possible reason why the US Congress is withholding arms sales to Nigeria is that, normatively speaking, the Nigerian State can be said to have failed woefully in its primary of securing the lives and properties of the citizens and catering for their corollary welfare in view of the insecurity can be argued to have come to overwhelm the capacity of the Nigerian State to handle. This is despite the fact that Aso Rock still have the command and control of the Armed Forces and all other security agencies in the country that collectively act as the Praetorian Guard of the State itself.

But the Armed Forces and the security agencies can no longer be said to be in control of the security situation in the country. Law and order is gradually breaking down across the length and breadth of the country. Even the blind would see this! Thus the Nigerian State at the end of the day can be said to be dancing or tottering at the edge of collapse into the valley of self-destruction or perdition. Politics of the country are slowly breaking down. The major ethnic groups are punching each other in the face every day. There is increasing worry, even though silently expressed, that the Centre is gradually losing its capacity to exert command and control over State power if the pattern of the ongoing insecurity in the country goes on like this for the next-and-half years preluding 2023 general elections.

In this broad context it would or could be considered dangerous for any external power to decide to sell arms to a state whose fate is not guaranteed in the next couple of years. Primarily, it is not those arms that will prevent the State from imminent collapse. If it were to be so, then there would have been every justification to sell arms as demanded by the Nigerian State But there is no mutual benefit assurance about such a scenario at all. Indeed, the reverse scenario would most probably be the case: that selling these fairly sophisticated arms to Nigeria at this point in time would be akin to gambling with a dangerous possibility of throwing more fuel to blazing inferno already raging.

So the US Congress refusal to authorize the arms sales now is an attitude of “let’s wait and see” what is going to happen in Nigeria in the next couple of months or years. If the country can pull itself from the brink of collapse by a free-and-fair 2023 general election, then the possibility exist that the US might reconsider its position. But nobody seems to be paying premium for 2023 elections because nobody wants to carry any form of insurance liability for a rancorous election.

But looking into the crystal ball, there is no guarantee at all that there will be free-and-fair elections in 2023 going by what the nation is already through at the security plane, at the level of regional instability and even the couples of elections that have taken place so far. Interestingly, most of the literatures predicting or that have asserted the failure of the Nigerian State has come from the same United States, and it would be very unreasonable to dismiss these literatures – as they are pointing at the growing crisis of existence of the Nigerian State.

It is indeed a very worrisome scenario.

The above clearly sounds unpalatable. But there is no other way to describe the awful situation that the North has plunged Nigeria since independence. (A jurisprudential analysis of the Conte-Long and Symington Amendments, Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and Leahy Law as relevant to contemporary security challenges and problems of human rights violations in countries like Nigeria will be conducted later in the nearest future)

The Contemporary Context

Reviewing the history of this reluctance or rejection and/or abortion of negotiation mid-way, it is apparent to any keen observer that the US has been acting in concert with an avowed wish that has not been surrendered up till date not to see Nigeria armed with US weapons that could be turned against its interests later in the future in view of the geopolitical volatility and preponderance of Muslim demographic of Nigeria. US ostensibly do not want to see its weapons sold to Nigeria falling into the wrong hands in Nigeria that could become a moral liability to the US1 conscience. The United States is secretly afraid of the Moslem population in Northern Nigeria due its unmistakable ongoing slow process of radicalization along fundamentalist or fanatical ideological streaks.

Thus the foot-dragging or refusal of the USG to sell arms to Nigeria is not just a decision of the moment or of momentary impulse – but a hardened historical development in nature and context. It is a far-sighted, hard-nosed decision predicated or based on fear of what Nigeria could become with the largest population of black people (even with the unpredictable character of the Moslem population) on the surface of the earth that could serve as a magnetic pole to black population in the US itself. It is also based on the fear of the so-called majority of the population (Moslems in the North) that is largely unpredictable in its character and disposition towards the US or the Western world. Today, we have Boko Haram that literally translated to mean “Western education is a sin” punishable by total rejection or jihadist attack. 

Another aspect of this unstated policy is that a very powerful bloc in the American Government which cut across the Executive, Congress and Corporate America does not want to see a militarily powerful Nigeria armed with US-made weapons that could be turned against US interests both in Nigeria and in Africa as a whole for any reason whatsoever especially if a rogue regime should inexplicably emerge in Nigeria, a possibility that can be inferred as being situated at the edge of US’s strategic thinking. This bloc, arguably ossified or consolidated within the American Establishment, is still evolving from the sixties to the present time in its vocal opposition to arming Nigeria with sophisticated US weapons. 

US Capitol building

The above is the major consideration that is not far-fetched in the light of contemporary experience of the US in its encounter with some other Moslem countries both in the Middle East and Far East (such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan)– and not consideration for the fundamental human rights of Nigerian citizens who are in the final analysis of less importance to US strategic or vital national security interests. The US is afraid of selling arms to a country where the majority population could unpredictably turned against its vital national security interests and launch attack on those interests as did Osama bin Laden-led Al Qae’da movement on September 11, 2001.

Superjacent to the above is the equally powerful forces in Nigeria that do not want to see the US selling arms to Nigeria because of geopolitical fear of domination by one particular ethnic group against the rest. This is a very significant factor and point of massive pressure on the USG serving as another unstated reason for the unwillingness or outright refusal to sell arms to Nigeria. The Nigerian Military that will be in the final custody of such arms is never seen to be impartialor reliable in the eyes and minds of these domestic forces. The Nigerian Military from the early independence years to the present time is still preponderantly dominated by sympathizers of Northern oligarchic interests despite the often cited arguments about its impartiality and genuine nationalism. Of all the military Heads of States ever produced by Nigeria since independence only two have come from the Southern part of the country. One of the two (Major General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi) was gruesomely killed in a counter-coup orchestrated by the North while the other survived. Six others were produced by the North, and only one of them (General Murtala Mohammed) was killed in a coup d’état. These are objective facts no matter how objectionable they might seem when cited as case study of fractured geopolitical structure of the country that has given rise to domination of one ethnic group against the rest and the corollary tension and conflicts over the decades.

For instance, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, NnamdiKanu, has [also] written an open letter to the United States President, Joe Biden, asking him not to sell weapons or ammunition to Nigeria because of the several instances of mass killings and ethnoreligious violence under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.²⁶Kanu added that the transfer of weapons or sales to the present Nigerian government would mean more attacks on the Christians, which goes against the “Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.”²⁷

The letter is dated May 1, 2021, and titled, “Re: Request for US Military Assistance By President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.” In the letter obtained by SaharaReporters, the IPOB leader said, “President Buhari has made Nigeria the most dangerous country in the world for Christians, Jews and Nigeria’s indigenous peoples, particularly those of the former Republic of Biafra. Hundreds of thousands are routinely plundered, tortured or killed with impunity by Nigerian security forces controlled and populated by Buhari’s Fulani Islamic tribesmen, often in collaboration with Fulani herdsmen (Islamist terrorist group that has been internationally branded the 4th deadliest terrorist grouping in the world).²⁸

“These atrocities have been confirmed and published by US State Department in its various Human Rights Reports on Nigeria, by Amnesty International and other credible bodies. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended listing Nigeria as a country of concern because of its religious oppressions. United States sales or transfers of weapons to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram are diverted to killing and terrorising Christians and Jews.²⁹

“President Buhari is promoting radical Islam in secular Nigeria. He has endorsed Sharia law in twelve northern Nigerian states. He has treated Boko Haram with kid gloves, releasing from detention hundreds arrested by the previous administration.³⁰

“He recruited them into the Nigerian army and offered a generous foreign scholarship to hundreds of them. He has appointed radical Muslims to head every security agency in Nigeria, including Sheik Isa Pantami, whose profuse support for Al Qaeda and Taliban was widely published recently. Yet, Mr. Buhari has refused to sack him from his sensitive position as Minister of Communication overseeing the biometric data of Nigerians. By defending Sheik Pantami, Mr. Buhari is seemingly aligning with Mr. Pantami’s terrorist sympathies. Mr. Buhari is a strong ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and China, and he has generally pursued policies that put Nigeria at odds with US national interest since you came to office.”³¹

Kanu said his prayers include that “we respectfully suggest that you consider, among other things, denying weapons sales or transfers to Nigeria under the Leahy Amendment; listing Nigeria complicit in persecuting Christian and Jews under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.³²

“We respectfully urge the President to invoke Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA) particularly, as amended, which prohibits the furnishing of assistance authorised by the FAA and the Arms Export Control Act to any foreign security force unit where there is credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”³³

[Kanu’s letter also] came as UK parliamentarians, including Founder/CEO of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, HART, Baroness Cox, Lord Alton of Liverpool, Dr. Rowan Williams, Founder/President, Mervyn Thomas CMG and CEO, International Organisation for Peace and Social Justice, Ayo Adedoyin, wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, expressing concerns that recent Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, FCDO, report on human rights and democracy didn’t list Nigeria as a priority country.³⁴ Their concerns stemmed from the fact that Nigeria was excluded, despite daily reports of terrorist violence, mass forced displacement, rise in abductions for ransom and a general backsliding on democratic practices.³⁵

[So] Aside stopping the sale of helicopters, the US lawmakers have also stood against the proposed sale of 28 helicopter engines produced by GE Aviation, 14 military-grade aircraft navigation systems made by Honeywell, and 2,000 advanced precision kill weapon systems – laser-guided rocket munitions, according to information sent by the State Department to Congress.³⁶The report said behind-the-scenes controversy over the proposed arms sale illustrates a broader debate among Washington policymakers over how to balance national security with human rights objectives.³⁷

The hold on the sale also showcases how powerful US lawmakers want to push the Biden administration to rethink US relations with Nigeria amid overarching concerns that Buhari is drifting toward authoritarianism as his government is besieged by multiple security challenges, including the Boko Haram insurgency.³⁸Western governments and international human rights organisations have ramped up their criticisms of the Buhari’s government, particularly in the wake of its ban on Twitter, systemic corruption issues, and the Nigerian military’s role in deadly crackdowns on #EndSARS protesters last October [2020].³⁹

The Nigerian Indigenous National Alliance for Self-determination has [also] called on the Governments of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and other top European and Western countries to impose heavy sanctions on the Nigerian Government for undermining democracy and continuously abusing human rights.⁴⁰ The group also urged the American Government and European countries to stop selling arms to the Nigerian Government, alleging that previous arms sold to the Buhari-led regime with borrowed funds have found their way into the hands of herdsmen, Boko Haram, ISIS, and other terrorists that are currently terrorising the indigenous people of the South and Middle Belt of Nigeria.⁴¹

This was contained in a statement by the Communications manager to NINAS, Mr. Maxwell Adeleye. NINAS is the umbrella body of leading regional self-determination groups in the South and Middle Belt of Nigeria with Ilana OmoOodua representing the Yoruba bloc, Lower Niger Congress representing the South-South and South East, and Middle Belt Forum representing the Middle Belt bloc.⁴²

The CFM signatories who wrote the petition to the US Government and European countries, according to the statement included a renowned historian, Emeritus Professor BanjiAkintoye, former President-General of OhanezeNdigbo, Chief NniaNwodo; respected varsity don, Prof. Yusuf Turaki, Secretary-General of NINAS, Barr. Tony Nnadi, Pioneer Commissioner for Education in Osun State and National Chairman of Ilana OmoOodua, Professor Wale Adeniran, amongst others.⁴³ Part of the letter read, “We the people of the South and Middle Belt under the aegis of Nigerian Indigenous National Alliance for Self-determination call on you to sanction the government of Nigeria for undermining democratic ethics and abusing people’s rights to live; to own property; to liberty; to dignity; to peaceful assembly and to self-determination.⁴⁴

“The arms being sold to the Nigerian Government with funds borrowed from your territory are now being used to kill, oppress, harass, intimidate and strangulate harmless protesters and defenseless people of the South and Middle Belt of Nigeria who are exercising their rights to self-determination and peaceful assembly.⁴⁵

 “Boko Haram terrorists, Fulani herdsmen, and bandits are now maiming, harassing, and killing our people on the roads and in their farmlands with same arms and ammunitions bought from your countries with impunity.⁴⁶

“Today, peaceful protest is an aberration in Nigeria. Opposition voices are now being arrested and caged behind the bar for demanding good governance and their inalienable right to self-determination.⁴⁷

“Freedom of speech is now an essential commodity in Nigeria. The leadership of Nigeria is now censoring the media to prevent free speech to alert the world to the ongoing genocide. Social Media is now under threat in Nigeria.⁴⁸

“We appeal to you, in the interest of peace-loving people of the South and Middle Belt of Nigeria to halt further sale of arms to the Nigerian Government until the country surrenders the sovereignty of the people back to them.⁴⁹

“For the record, our cardinal demand as a group is for the Nigerian Government to function as the transitional government while a United Nations supervised referendum is organised so the people can exercise their self-determination right and end to unitary Nigeria which has been turned into an apartheid state.⁵⁰

“We demand unconditional abolition of 1999 Constitution of Nigeria which we have shown to be a fraud perpetrated against the people of the South and Middle Belt of Nigeria given that the people did NOT make it.”⁵¹

Today, there are palpable fears of the country disintegrating along the lines of geopolitical sympathies and primordial sentiments of the different ethnic groups in the country. Individuals may choose not to believe in such fear. But this fear has been objectified by the character and pattern of ethno-centric jingoism and killings that have been taking place in the country for the past two decades now. Again, this is a fact that cannot be wished away. There are separatist movementshighly active in the country today.

Petitions are flying around international bodies such as the United Nations, European Union, and African Union about the crisis currently brewing in Nigeria. Even the US Government and individual European powers are also being petitioned. This has been duly noted by the international community, notably Western powers despite their views or wished to the contrary.

These contrary views or wishes are, however, quite legitimate. They are also based on fear of what would happen if a country like Nigeria should disintegrate. They are afraid of the spiral effects of such disintegration especially the creation of humanitarian crisis the world may not have seen before where a population of over two hundred million people would be dispersed throughout Africa and spilling over to Europe.

The inference from this fear is that nobody (Western power) wants to be seen to be held responsible for arming a country where such arms could fall into the hand of a rogue regime that could spark off genocide of unimaginable proportion if conflict should erupt over geopolitical disputes, hence the reluctance or refusal of the US Government to sell sophisticated arms to Nigeria.

Today, under the current administration in the country, the top-echelon of the military, national security and intelligence agencies are preponderantly dominated by elements of Northern extraction. They were so appointed by the President with flagrant disregard for the geopolitical sensitivities or federal characters in the country. Yet there is no peace in the country despite the domination of the security architecture of the country by one ethnic group. There are increasing tendencies towards authoritarianism or dictatorship with a vicarious attempt to overthrow rule of law and other principles of social justice. There are evidences of religious bigotry mounting in the country and preponderantly coming from the North. Indeed, the North is on offensive while the South is on the defensive.

These are apart from the high-intensity security crisis, again mainly domiciled in the North with its shrieking extremist or fundamentalist religious incendiarism. For the first time in recent memory, the battle cries of Islamic State or Caliphate are being heard from all nooks and crannies of the North, from different nebulous organizations that did not exist two decades ago. Today there is Boko Haram insurgency raging in the North eastern part of the country. There is increasing banditry and kidnapping in the North West and North Central that could also serve as stepping stones tofurther insurgency of a new typology that is yet unknown. Even though the Shiites in the North have not taken up arms against the Nigerian State, there is no love any more between the Hausas and the Fulanis contrary to the predominant view of the “unholy” alliance between the two to dominate the rest of country. The Hausas have shown clearly in recent times they also want to be liberated from the stupefying oppression of the Fulanis. 

In the North East and North West, two combat aircrafts have been shot down while a clumsy and effete military looked on with hands akimbo! These are dangerous signs of the time, an ominous cloud looming on the horizon over the destiny of Nigeria as it is presently constituted.

Who, in his right mind, would want to sell arms to such a country – except to fuel the crisis?

In modern times, the US is afraid of having another tragedy of Vietnam and Iran repeating itself. The US went into Vietnam supporting the South against the North but ended up having its nose bloodied in the process. The US could not believe it could be roundly trashed and defeated by the Communist North Vietnam. US lost more than 58,000 soldiers in the Vietnam War, a tragedy that is still etched in the modern memory of the US.

The US had also hitherto managed, supported,and armed Iran to the teeth until 1979 when the Ayatollahs came and took over the reign of government. The US did not see the Ayatollahs coming until then. Americans were taken hostages and spent nearly two years in captivity. Attempt to rescue them by Delta Force commandos ended up in the Iranian desert with crashed helicopters, etc. The rest is history as the saying goes. Iran became a mortal enemy of the United States, a bone in the throat of the US, a nuclear power and existential threat to its vital national security interests especially in the Middle East. Even though Iran is not an Arab country per se, it is an avowed Islamic country espousing Jihadist ideology committed to Islamic Revolution worldwide based on Shiite ideology. Iran has subsequently become hostile to the US’s visible and invisible national security interests and global hegemony where the Middle East is concerned since 1979. Iran wants to become the undisputed Middle East hegemon both in competition with Israel and Saudi Arabia. Had it not been for the support of the US, Iran would have long invaded Saudi Arabia to overthrow the Sunni-led Monarchy there. Only Israel is capable and ever ready to stand up to Iran. US has often accused and designated Iran as a terrorist nation for many years now. A major flashpoint was reached when the US under President Donald Trump took out General QasemSoleimani, the Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that is often accused of being the arrowhead of Iranian-headed global terrorism, through an air strike on January 3, 2020 including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and 8 others near Baghdad, Iraq.

Nigeria has the largest population of Moslems in Africa that is predominantly Sunni. Sunni Islam provides the ideological base for Wahabist-Salafist fundamentalism from where Al Qae’da and ISIS sprang from. It is also where Boko Haram ideology and insurgency also sprang from. Indeed, “Boko Haram” is interpreted to mean “Western education is a sin” – a definitive interpretation that speaks volume about how the Nigerian Moslems in the Northern part of the country view the Western world and its ways of life. But Shiite ideology has also become active in the last two decades in Nigeria – headed by Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzacky. The Northern part of Nigeria has become a hotbed of religious fundamentalism of various descriptions. There have been demonstrations against Western interests in Northern part of the country arising out of religious protests against certain developments in Western Europe that are interpreted to be against the tenets of Islam. So there is an inchoate hostility against US interests in the North seen through the lens of religious fundamentalism or fanaticism.

The US is without doubt fearful of the evolving hostility in the Northern part of the country without stating this as a matter of public policy concern. Navigating through such VUCA environment is not easy and it is safer to be on the side of caution by not selling sophisticated arms to a country that is still in a state of flux, or evolution and can, therefore, not be predicted with mathematical accuracy in its behavioural pattern. This is despite what can be seen as the ability of the US to manage this evolving latent hostility over the decades.

If the US can sell A-29 Super Tucano combat aircrafts to Nigeria of which six has already been delivered recently, why not other types of weapons? US could afford to sell A-29 Tucano combat aircrafts to Nigeria because it is basically a light attack aircraft despite all the praises heaped on it by the Nigerian media. Tucano aircraft is not a heavy attack aircraft like the Cobra attack helicopter that is part of what Nigeria is currently requesting from the US. Indeed, the USG would never even consider selling F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon that are acknowledged as air superiority/dominance aircrafts – not to talk of F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II stealth aircrafts that are deemed as some of the most advanced fighter jets/masters of the sky in the world. If a Tucano aircraft is shot down, the US would not shed a drop of tears because it has no modern sensitive security equipment or architecture that must not fall into the hands of an enemy. Tucano aircraft is a peanut! But not Cobra helicopter!

There is additional worry about how Nigeria has been prosecuting the war against Boko Haram insurgency. For instance, the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) of which Nigeria is the epicenter to combat Boko Haram insurgencythat was cobbled together in 2015/2016 has been a resounding failure, unable to stem the sandstorm of Boko Haram insurgency against the Nigerian State in particular. Nigeria has shown itself over and over again to be untrustworthy as a bulwark against any regional security threat – except to egregiously violate the human rights of the citizens, oppress them and have them socio-politically emasculated.

Nigeria has also not been able to manage and maximize all the supports pledged by various countries in combating the Boko Haram insurgency. The sincerity of the Nigerian State in quelling the insurgency is even doubted given the flip-flop approach to fighting the insurgents. Many unsavoury developments and controversies have taken place within the Nigerian Military that put a huge doubt about its commitment to ending the insurgency. Thus nobody can be sure of Nigeria putting such sophisticated weapons it is requesting from the US to good usage in view of its legendary incompetence in managing human and material resources.

Although US’s vital national security or economic interests have not really been seriously under attack by Boko Haram insurgents or bandits. US have no mega-buck economic investments either in the North East or North West. That is why the US does not seem to care too much but has decidedly left Nigeria to its own fate and/or to sort itself out with the evils of Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, herdsmen killing and ethno-religious conflicts. When a US citizen, Philip Walton, was kidnapped in southern Niger Republic but transported to Nigerian territory, the US did not hesitate to apply force by sending in Navy Seals to rescue the victim on October 31, 2020, and only informed the Nigerian authority after the rescue operation had been carried out more than 48 hours later. Nigeria was not aware that a rescue mission has been accomplished by the Americans right on its sovereign soil until informed.

American economic investments are mainly located in the Southern part of the especially in the oil and gas industry. American Government was not too happy about how the Niger Delta militancy was carelessly allowed by the Nigerian State through its mismanagement to cause heavy toll on American multinational oil corporations operating in the region, even though the corporations are legally and morally guilty of heinous malfeasances committed in the region against the people and the environment of the region.

Furthermore, the region has also become a very harsh operating environment especially due to Niger Delta militancy, a development that is etched in the memory of Corporate America that has even been made into a film titled Black November featuring the famous American actress, Vivica Fox. The environment has also come to include the entrance of hostile powers such as China. This environment has hitherto remained an exclusive domain or play field of Euro-American multinational oil corporations. China has consistently made inroads into the Nigerian economy since 1999 and does not care about human rights issues to the chagrin of the Western powers. The US is definitely not happy about this development – thus its cavalier or ambivalent attitude towards security crisis in the country especially in the North as long as its investments are not in any way threatened.

It is pertinent to note that Nigeria has tragically become a playground for superpowers’ interventions in the internal affairs of Nigeria because of its legendary congenital weakness and inability to overcome its internal security problems. From Canada to Britain, from France to Germany, from Israel to Iran, from Saudi Arabia-led coalition against terrorism to Turkey, and to God-only-knows-what country, assistance has been pledged without fulfilment and resolution of the internal crisis. Nigeria has become helpless, a puppet played around by these superpowers.

Boko Haram insurgency has been with Nigeria for the past twelve years. From where does it get the arms with which it has been waging war of attrition against the Nigerian State? Banditry has also been with Nigeria for the past six years. From where does it get arms to conduct this heinous criminal activity? In the case of bandits, there has been semi-official justification for their possession of illegal arms, ditto for the kidnappers and herdsmen killers. Wherever these arms might be coming from, the Nigerian State (through the military and other security agencies) has not been able to block the sources. This suggest how porous our borders are and how foreign enemies might have successfully infiltrated the country at probably all strata of the society.

In the last few years there have been public accusations and counter-accusations of Boko Haram insurgents and bandits having more sophisticated arms than the Nigerian Military. There have also been accusations and counter-accusations of arms been stolen from Nigerian military armoury and sold or finding their ways into the possession of Boko Haram insurgents and bandits. The Federal Government has not been able to disprove or impeach these accusations beyond reasonable doubts. The Nigerian authority has not been able to convince the public that this has not been the case.

The United States does not probably hate anything more than selling arms to a State authority only for those arms to find their ways into the possession of non-state actors hostile to the vital US national security interests.

Overall, Nigeria has not contemporaneously acquitted itself as a reliable and responsible State actor that could otherwise be entrusted with sophisticated arms because of its legendary sloppiness or clumsiness in handling sensitive military equipment. Nigeria has not been able to remove the toga of unreliability and irresponsibility of a State actor committed to securing the lives and properties of its own citizens. Nigeria is surreptitiously regarded as having been unfortunately hijacked by non-state dogs and jackals of war!

A Blow to the Solar Plexus

President Muhammadu Buhari’s engagement with the US over the sales of arms to Nigeria can be traced to July 2015 when he made the first official visit to the US as the new Nigerian President. In complete reversal of his earlier attacks on the defeated party, People’s Democratic Party, in the 2015 general election, President Buhari blamed the US for not helping to de-escalate and reduce the Boko Haram insurgency and campaign of terror in Nigeria. He has earlier accused the defeated party, PDP, of not doing enough to crush Boko Haram. At other times, he accused the party of trying to wipe out the entire population of the North. 

But when faced with the reality of the insidiousness of the Boko Haram insurgency and campaign of terror, he quickly backpedaled and shifted the blame on the US for not doing enough to help Nigeria overcome her security challenges.

Nigeria’s [P]resident says the United States’ refusal to sell his country needed weapons is aiding and abetting Islamist extremists waging a deadly campaign there. President Muhammadu Buhari made his comments as he ended a four-day visit to the U.S.⁵² He says the Obama administration’s refusal to sell his country weapons to battle Boko Haram is aiding and abetting the extremists. The comments came at the end of his first official visit this week to the U.S. and coincide with the latest deadly attacks in Nigeria.⁵³

[The statement] came hours after Nigerian [P]resident Muhammadu Buhari spoke at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, saying his country’s military is, quote, “largely impotent in the fight against Boko Haram militants.” Buhari partly blamed the U.S. for that, specifically the administration’s application of the Leahy Amendment prohibiting military support to armed forces accused of human rights abuses.⁵⁴ “Unwittingly and, I dare say, unintentionally, the United States government has aided and abetted the Boko Haram terrorists in the prosecution of its extremist ideology and hate,” Buhari was quoted as saying.⁵⁵

The Nigerian leader [appealed] to President Obama and Congress to be more flexible about the Leahy Law. President Buhari, himself a former military ruler and army general, argues that alleged rights abuses by Nigeria’s armed forces have not been substantiated. Amnesty International says the Nigerian military is responsible for the deaths of up to 8,000 detainees in its campaign to defeat Boko Haram insurgents.⁵⁶

The issues here are fairly complicated by lack of understanding most especially on the part of the Nigerian State that wanted the United States to sell arms to it irrespective of what the American laws or regulations say about the process of selling arms to a country with abysmal human rights records. The US has maintained a principle stand so far whether such a stand is considered prejudicial or not. And in this type of scenario it is easy to see who will most probably prevail: the smart and the powerful and not the dim-witted or unprincipled.

As the fight against Boko Haram intensifies, President Barack Obama is supporting Nigeria’s neighboring countries with $35 million worth of military and defense support services to Chad, Niger and Mali channeled through France. A press statement from the White House last week said the U.S. leader gave the support to help shore up the security of the three French-speaking African nations that share borders with Nigeria.⁵⁷ But the United States did not include Nigeria, which is at the center of the five-year war on Boko Haram. And that does not speak well of the relations between Washington and the Nigerian military.⁵⁸

Indeed, relations between the two countries have been at a record low, with Nigeria accusing the United States of not providing sufficient support for its fight against Boko Haram at a moment when help is vital.⁵⁹Nigeria suspended military training with the U.S. in 2014 after Washington repeatedly blocked its effort to buy arms to fight the insurgents. “At the request of the Nigerian government, the United States will discontinue its training of a Nigerian Army battalion,” the U.S. government said in a statement through its embassy in Abuja.⁶⁰

After months of informal allegations, the Nigerian ambassador to the U.S., Ade Adefuye, openly accused the United States last November of refusing to sell arms and equipment to Nigeria to help defeat Boko Haram.⁶¹ In its response, the American government said it has supported Nigeria to the extent its law permits, and accused the Nigerian security forces of human rights violations. The U.S. said its laws do not allow sales of arms to countries with such human rights record.⁶²The U.S. government blocked the purchase of U.S.-made Cobra combat helicopters. The sales reportedly were coming from Israel which had okayed the deal from its own inventory, but needed U.S. approval since the fighter-helicopters were from America.⁶³ The Israeli government cannot transfer the military helicopters to another foreign country without the U.S. signing off on the sale.⁶⁴The United States had criticized the Nigerian military’s human rights record and its handling of the Boko Haram crisis, particular the search for over 200 schoolgirls abducted by the group from Chibok, Borno State.⁶⁵

A former Nigerian Consul General to the United States, Ambassador Joe Keshi wrote in a local daily [in the] U.S. that records show Washington has carried out major arms shipments, running into several billions of dollars, to countries with abysmal human rights records, including brutal suppression of democratic dissents. “A number of countries in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa… are beneficiaries of American military support,” Keshi complained.⁶⁶

“Besides, even if we stretch the human rights violations a little, it is not America, whose military and security agencies have had their own share of abysmal records in almost all their operations outside the U.S., that should openly criticize the Nigerian military the way it does.”⁶⁷

In fact, the human rights issue may be only one problem. Defense analysts believe another possible reason why the U.S. refused to sell arms to Nigeria was because it feared sophisticated military hardware could end up in the hands of Islamist insurgents. Boko Haram militants have on numerous occasions seized arms from fleeing Nigerian soldiers. “My understanding is that there were leaks or moles inside the Nigerian military who were leaking information to Boko Haram,” says Ben Moores, senior analyst at the defense and security analysis organization IHS Jane’s 360. He told Voice of America, “They were leaking certain bits of information, training information and perhaps information on the team itself.”⁶⁸

American officials have in the past accused the Nigerian military of corruption as well. Sarah Sewall, the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, said during a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year that despite Nigeria’s $5.8 billion security budget, “corruption prevents supplies as basic as bullets and transport vehicles from reaching the front lines of the struggle against Boko Haram.”⁶⁹ “Nigeria will need to seriously tackle corruption if it is to succeed in stamping out Boko Haram,” Sewall said.⁷⁰Similarly, Nigeria’s president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari in an interview with CNN a month before he won his country’s presidential election, said the Nigerian military was unable to defeat Boko Haram as a result of “misappropriation of the resources provided by the government for weapons.”⁷¹

The two countries are not relating well economically, either, after the U.S. fully suspended buying Nigerian crude oil in July, a decision that helped plunge Nigeria into one of its most severe financial crises when the oil price fell to a seven-year low.⁷² The situation may [however] change. The U.S. is expected to rebuild ties with Nigeria when Buhari takes office as president, if we are to judge by the Obama administration’s recent promises to support the incoming government.^{73, 74}

[Furthermore] President Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, July 22, 2015, said the US Leahy Law which prohibits the US Department of State and Department of Defence from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity “aided and abetted” the onslaught of the Boko Haram terrorists group in Nigeria. The law which is named after its principal sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont was the main reason the US government refused to sell weapons to the Nigerian Army last year and even went ahead to stop Israel from selling Cobra helicopters to Nigeria.⁷⁵

Apart from Nigeria, other countries that have been affected by this law include; Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan. President Buhari during a speech at the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), pleaded with the US government to review the law in order for it to give the needed assistance to Nigeria in crushing Boko Haram. He went further to note that in the case of Nigeria, the Leahy Law was applied by the US on the grounds of unproven allegations of human rights violations levelled against the Nigerian Armed forces, a development that had denied the country access to appropriate strategic weapons to wipe out Boko Haram. Buhari said: “In the face of abduction of innocent school girls from their hostels, indiscriminate bombings of civilians in markets and places of worship, our forces have remained largely impotent because they do not possess the appropriate weapons and technology, which they could have had, had the so-called human rights violations not been an obstacle.”⁷⁶

[The] July Buhari’s remarks in Washington prompted Sen. Patrick Leahy to issue a curt statement denouncing his “misdirected criticism.” “Rather than suggest that the United States is at fault for not funding murderers and rapists in the Nigerian military, he should face up to his own responsibility to effectively counter Boko Haram,” Leahy said. “He should direct his attention to the Nigerian military, and the Nigerian courts, and clean up the units implicated in such atrocities.”⁷⁷

[A]ides to Mr. Leahy, a sponsor of a human rights law that prohibits the State Department and Pentagon from providing military assistance to foreign militaries with poor human rights records, have expressed concern. “We don’t have confidence in the Nigerians’ ability to use them in a manner that complies with the laws of war and doesn’t end up disproportionately harming civilians, nor in the capability of the U.S. government to monitor their use,” said Tim Rieser, a top Leahy aide.⁷⁸

President Buhari may not have known the implications of his careless accusations or blames against the US at the time he was making them. He most probably may not have realized that these types of statements would come to haunt his government years later. In the first place, hardly can the US be accused or blamed for the situation in Nigeria. US cannot be morally and legally, even politically, held responsible for the outbreak of insurgency and/or banditry in Nigeria. Nigeria is solely responsible for the sordid state of affairs in Nigeria for its failure of governance over the decades, and for his own personal failure as a leader at understanding the dynamics of insecurity in Nigeria – which cumulatively gave rise to the hydra-headed monster of insecurity that Nigeria is now battling with.

Now Nigeria is running from pillar to pole to prevent Nigeria from combusting or disintegrating due to the overwhelming nature of the insecurity bedeviling the country now amidst poor economic performance. Interestingly, when he joined others blaming Jonathan administration and accusing it of trying to wipe out Northerners, he forgot that the insecurity is mostly prevalent in the same North and has been the place that has come to suffer most from the various attacks: insurgency, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping even herdsmen killing and various other acts of pogrom. 

Six years later, Buhari is now faced with the full but grave implications of what he said to the US authorities.

The fundamental premise upon which the weapon sales are being currently withheld is the need for “fundamental rethink of the framework of our overall engagement” on the part of the USG with Nigeria. According to Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy: “Sen. Bob Menendez, chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for a “fundamental rethink of the framework of our overall engagement” with Nigeria during a Senate hearing with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June”⁷⁹even though the State Department describes the U.S.-Nigeria relationship as “among the most important in sub-Saharan Africa” and has provided limited funding for various military training and education programs.⁸⁰

Nigeria has relied on U.S. arms sales in the past to help address multiple security challenges: the 12-year insurgency by Boko Haram militants in the country’s northeast, a spate of high-profile kidnapping-for-ransom campaigns targeting schoolchildren in the country’s northwest, and deadly clashes between the country’s semi-nomadic herders and farmers fueled by climate change and environmental degradation of the country’s arable land.⁸¹

Some experts said the United States should hit the pause button on major defense sales until it makes a broader assessment of the extent to which corruption and mismanagement hobble the Nigerian military and whether the military is doing enough to minimize civilian casualties in its campaign against Boko Haram and other violent insurrectionists.⁸²

The United States has scrubbed proposed arms sales to Nigeria in the past on a case-by-case basis. Former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration cut back arms sales to Nigeria over concerns about civilian casualties and human rights abuses, including blocking a 2014 sale of Cobra helicopters by Israel to Nigeria. During that time, U.S. officials reportedly voiced concerns that Boko Haram had infiltrated the Nigerian military—an accusation that provoked indignation from the Nigerian government.⁸³

These moves severely strained U.S.-Nigeria relations, with Buhari accusing Obama of having unintentionally “aided and abetted” extremist groups by refusing to expand military cooperation and arms sales.⁸⁴

In late 2017, then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration agreed to sell the Nigerian government 12 A-29 Super Tucano warplanes, resurrecting a proposed sale the Obama administration froze after the Nigerian Air Force bombed a refugee camp that January. The first batch of those planes arrived in Nigeria earlier this month.⁸⁵A U.S. State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, saying: “as a matter of policy, the department does not confirm or comment upon proposed defense sales or transfers until they have been formally notified to Congress.”⁸⁶

Under current practice, the State Department informally notifies Congress through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) of proposed arms sales in advance of a formal notification. If committee members raise concerns about the proposed sale, the committees can freeze the sale until they receive satisfactory answers about their concerns from the State Department.⁸⁷Once a proposed arms sale has been formally notified to Congress, Congress has a 30-day window to review the sale and, if it opposes the sale, pass legislation to block it. If Congress takes no action, the sale will move forward.⁸⁸

The Trump administration, frustrated with how Congress held up proposed arms sales for months, weighed scrubbing the decades-old practice of informally notifying Congress about arms sales, but it faced steep backlash over the idea from lawmakers.⁸⁹

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is now looking to further extend congressional oversight over U.S. arms sales to foreign countries. Sens. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, Mike Lee, a Republican, and Bernie Sanders, an Independent, introduced legislation  …aimed at reasserting Congress’s role in foreign policy. The bill included a provision that would require Congress to actively approve all major sales rather than allow arms sales to be automatically approved unless Congress blocked them.⁹⁰

The behind-the-scenes controversy over the proposed arms sale illustrates a broader debate among Washington policymakers over how to balance national security with human rights objectives. The hold on the sale also showcases how powerful U.S. lawmakers want to push the Biden administration to rethink U.S. relations with Africa’s most populous country amid overarching concerns that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is drifting toward authoritarianism as his government is besieged by multiple security challenges, including a jihadist insurgency.⁹¹

Nigeria is on the front lines in the battle against Boko Haram, one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, and plays a role in U.S. and international efforts to roll back extremist groups in the Sahel region of West Africa. But Western governments and international human rights organizations have ramped up their criticisms of the Nigerian government, particularly in the wake of its ban on Twitter, systemic corruption issues, and the Nigerian military’s role in deadly crackdowns on protesters after widespread demonstrations against police brutality last year.⁹²

U.S. lawmakers have put on hold a proposal to sell almost $1 billion of weapons to Nigeria over concerns about possible human rights abuses by the government, three sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.⁹³ The proposed sale of 12 AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters made by Bell and related equipment worth $875 million is being delayed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, the sources told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.⁹³

The hold could have an impact on Nigeria’s efforts to seek support to fight Islamic State West Africa Province and jihadist group Boko Haram in the northeast as well as armed bandits in the northwest of the country.⁹⁴ However, the hold may not hinder Nigerian military capabilities on some missions.⁹⁵

Nigeria is also battling rising armed robberies and kidnappings for ransom where thinly deployed security forces have struggled to contain the influence of armed gangs.⁹⁶ U.S. officials last October complained of “excessive force” by Nigerian military forces on unarmed civilians and called for restraint after soldiers opened fire on protesters demonstrating against police brutality in Lagos.⁹⁷

Of major concern were the ongoing separatist agitations going on in the South Eastern part of the country and more worrisomely joined by the South West also agitating for an independent Oduduwa Republic.⁹⁸

Although the U.S. Department of State described its relationship with Nigeria as “among the most important in sub-Saharan Africa” to whose military it has provided limited funding for training and education programmes, recent events in the most populous African country have raised concerns among human rights advocates.⁹⁹

Nigerian protesters calling for police reform were last year attacked by security operatives and thugs allegedly sponsored by the state, leading to some deaths, while no security official has been prosecuted for the mass killing of hundreds of Shiites in Kaduna in December 2015.¹⁰⁰ Nigeria has relied on the U.S. arms deals to help it tackle insecurity in the past and recently received some fighter Tucano jets from the U.S. However, the latest action by the U.S. lawmakers will not be the first time the North American nation would suspend arms sale to the African country.¹⁰¹

[But] commenting on that failed deal in an interview, a former Nigerian ambassador to China and foreign affairs minister, AminuWali, called the blockade, a “blackmail (to) the sitting government at the time” by the West, because it fell for the “propaganda of opposition parties” without proper verification. Mr. Wali was a minister when the People’s Democratic Party was the ruling party. In 2015, the main opposition at the time, the All Progressives Congress, was [crowned] the ruling party after defeating the PDP at the polls. “For example, we (wanted) Cobra helicopters from the U.S. they refused to sell it to us during my time. We headed elsewhere to get these helicopters,” Mr. Wali recalled his time as minister. “I visited Turkey. They said they are willing to sell those types of aircraft to us but, unfortunately, they cannot go ahead and sell to us because the engines are American, therefore, they have to have a license from the U.S. But the U.S. was not prepared to help.”^{102, 103}

If the U.S. Department of State has hitherto described the US relationship with Nigeria as “among the most important in sub-Saharan Africa,” then one wonders why it is reluctant to sell arms to Nigeria. Meanwhile, the concerns or objections by the US Congress have not been debunked or clarified by the Department of State. Nigeria may have to wait as long as possible until then. But by all indications, at least by body language, no quarter in the US is ready to confront the US Congress because nobody really wanted to be seen doing so for variety of political reasons – not in the least, the Department of State. 

The blockade came as a huge blow on the over-bloated or larger-than-life ego of Buhari administration. The Nigerian Government did not expect this at this point in time especially as the country gradually moves towards 2023 general election where the ruling party would like to claim imaginary gains in combating Boko Haram insurgency and other security threats across the nation.

It is the fault of the Nigerian State not to be able to predict where the wind is likely to blow in the US. And the crux of this fault is the self-delusion created in the top governing circle in Nigeria that the USG/US Congress would not have the boldness to deny it its request for arms. Where that self-delusion is coming from is rather hard to fathom.

Americans are not known to be frivolous in their strategic thinking firmament when it comes to protecting their vital national security interests and warding off whatever could negatively impact those interests. They are very rigorously careful. They do not throw caution to the winds the way some countries flippantly do to their eternal regrets. They conduct (what I would like to call) apriori strategic risk analysis and calculations based and balanced between empirical reality and available epistemological theoretical resources drawing from their collective capacity of critical thinking or neuroweaponry to arrive at sustainable orthopraxy and/or methopraxy that drives their policy initiatives. Every government or State should be able to do this, in an objective and bipartisan manner over strategic terms and time scale. And if any Government or State is not able to do this, it is its funeral and should not blame others for shortchanging them theoretically or epistemologically.

Americans can be safely argued to have perfected the art and science of this apriori strategic risk analysis and calculations. The elevation of fundamental human rights to a level of policy tool of negotiation, leveraging and/or arm-twisting with countries with poor human rights record is part of this strategic theoretical armoury and marks a critical turning point in the American foreign policy and strategic firmament. This elevation can be seen to be gradual from the time, for instance of non-interference of the late 60s, to the present time. It also marks a departure from the outright brazen swash-buckling and gunboat diplomacy. Interestingly, in reverse theoretical engineering, harping on fundamental human rights is also a means of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

But the USG or US Congress did not just wake up to decide to deny Nigeria its arms request on the basis of whims and caprices. No. They must have conducted their own researches and the conclusions drawn from such researches did not favour or recommend approval for the sales of arms to Nigeria – at least for now. What makes the Congressmen to demand for “strategic” rethinking of the bilateral relationship with Nigeria? What did they see as indicators to warrant such a demand? What raw and analytical intelligencematerials do they have that informed the decision to call for the rethinking or reassessment of the bilateral relationship between the two countries?

Meanwhile, there are hawks and doves in the American Establishment. It is obvious that the hawks in the US Congress have prevailed, at least for now, facilitating the stoppage of arms sales to Nigeria. Interestingly, there are probably more hawks in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party as record would reveal. The hawks in the Democratic Party are even more sophisticated, suave and more mobile than those in the GOP.

Thus it would be very wrong for the Nigerian Foreign Policy Establishment, for instance, to assume or think that President Joe Biden is a dove. He is not. He is a hawk to the core but probably pretend to be a dove for strategic public relations purposes. Biden has spent a significant part of his political career in the Congress specializing in the area of economic management, national security and foreign policy matters. No doubt, he significantly projects and conveys the image of a dove – but that is a ruse as he would most probably admit in a candid confession.

On the other hand, the Nigerian Foreign Policy Establishment should have known all these if it has conducted its own apriori strategic risk analysis of Biden’s White House at this point in time – for instance, breaking down the foreign policy thrusts of Biden administration to its elemental details which interestingly include upholding fundamental human rights across the globe as a rule of the thumb for enforcing rule of law across the globe. But there is no such known risk analysis of the man at the helm of affairs in the United States today by the Nigerian Foreign Policy Establishment and other strategic think-tanks. If the Nigerian Foreign Policy Establishment has done such analysis, there is no doubt that it will be part of its conclusions there is trouble ahead if the USG pushes the issue of fundamental human rights to the front burner in its negotiation with Nigeria for any agreement – because Nigeria would ignobly fail that test as it has done now. 

Nigeria has not been able to impeach the allegations of fundamental human rights violation and the ongoing massive corruption in Nigeria. Nigeria has not been able to challenge the United States over its refusal to sell arms to it because it has no means of doing so. There are no means of arm-twisting or blackmailing the USG to do its bidding. No known abracadabra or “otumokpo” (juju) means available to Nigeria to do so. Nigeria has no moral armaments or sophisticated jurisprudential armoury to do so. Nigeria could only whimper or grumble silently. This has put Nigeria in a quandary. How this would be resolved in shortest possible time is not known for now.

There are two possible options, however. First, the Federal Government can continue to lobby the US to accept to sell the required arms to Nigeria. Second, it can approach another country for arms. On the first possibility, it is very unlikely that the US will yield to such lobby. President Joe Biden is most unlikely to use Executive Order to override the Congress’ decision for several political reasons especially in the context of the delicate balance of forces between the Democrats and the Republicans in the Congress. There is no evidence to show that the White House is in anyway impressed by what is going on in Nigeria currently. Indeed, it may even be speculated upon that President Biden is most probably not too happy with what is going on in Nigeria.

The possibility of the second option is also very narrow as the global reach of the US is unquestionable. It can successfully block any sale by another country. Nigeria may not be able to buy any weapon from any European country once the US says no especially if such weapon has any American component no matter how small. The only way out in this context is for Nigeria to approach countries like China or Russia who may probably be eager to sell arms to Nigeria as a way of entering the Nigerian military domain to loosen the hold of the US on the country.

The Growing Concern about Buhari Administration

Even though human rights violations overlap various regimes or administrations in Nigeria (especially in the case of Jonathan administration and Buhari administration) the concerns of the US over the poor human rights record under Buhari administration, contrary to all positive expectations about its promised respect for the fundamental human rights of the citizens, may be considered quite legitimate and may not be swept under the carpet at all on the basis of patriotism or nationalism.

Thus, it is not the first time the US is refusing to sell arms to Nigeria. In 2014 under former President Goodluck Jonathan, the US refused to sell arms to Nigeria citing the same human rights issues.Nigeria was forced to protest vigorously against this refusal.

Nigeria’s ambassador to the US has criticized Washington for refusing to sell his government “lethal” weapons to fight militant Islamists. Nigeria needed support to deliver the “killer punch”, not “light jabs” against the Boko Haram group, AdebowaleIbidapoAdefuye said.¹⁰⁴ His comments came as the militants seized the north-eastern Mahia town. The US has previously ruled out heavily arming the Nigerian military because of its alleged poor human rights record.¹⁰⁵Government soldiers have been accused by rights groups of carrying out many atrocities, including torturing and executing suspects. US laws ban the sale of lethal weapons to countries whose military are accused of gross human rights abuses.¹⁰⁶

But Mr. Adefuye said the accusations were based on “half-truths”, rumours and exaggerated accounts, which were being spread by political opponents ahead of the elections. “The US government has up till today refused to grant Nigeria’s request to purchase lethal equipment that would have brought down the terrorists within a short time,” MrAdefuye told members of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “We find it difficult to understand how and why, in spite of the US presence in Nigeria with their sophisticated military technology, Boko Haram should be expanding and becoming more deadly,” he added.¹⁰⁷

MrAdefuye said Boko Haram was Nigeria’s equivalent of the Islamic State group, and threatened the nation’s “territorial integrity”. “There is no use giving us the type of support that enables us to deliver light jabs to the terrorists when what we need to give them is the killer punch,” he said. “A friend in need is a friend indeed. The true test of friendship is in times of adversity,” he added.¹⁰⁸

Nigerians who voted for All Progressives Congress and Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and 2019 are now regretting their ill-informed actions based on stupefying propaganda mounted by the party in the 2015 general elections for the wrong decision made during these times. It was a huge disappointment to see a government that hitherto promised to depart from what it considered a sordid past and chart a new path for national progress and development for the country falling headlong into the evilry of dictatorship and attendant attacks on the same fundamental human rights of the citizens under the guise of upholding national security interests instead of rule of law.

The Military, the Police and Directorate of State Services became more brutal in their individual and collective attacks on the fundamental human rights of the citizens under Buhari-led administration than under Jonathan administration.

According to Amnesty International report on Nigeria in mid-2015, In the course of security operations against Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria, Nigerian military forces have extra-judicially executed more than 1,200 people; they have arbitrarily arrested at least 20,000 people, mostly young men and boys; and have committed countless acts of torture. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Nigerians have become victims of enforced disappearance; and at least 7,000 people have died in military detention. Amnesty International has concluded that these acts, committed in the context of a non-international armed conflict, constitute war crimes for which military commanders bear both individual and command responsibility, and may amount to crimes against humanity.¹⁰⁹

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, in an op-ed, commented: “In his inaugural address last Friday [May 29, 2015], Nigeria’s newly elected president, Mohammadu Buhari, promised to “overhaul the rules of engagement to avoid human rights violations.” While this very public acknowledgement of a problem repeatedly downplayed by the previous administration is welcome, the seriousness of Nigeria’s human rights violations cannot be overstated. Indeed, even as the new president was making this commitment, he was watched from the audience by a number of high-ranking military officials who, along with others, Amnesty International is today calling to be investigated for their role in the mass deaths of more than 8,000 people — shot, starved, suffocated, and tortured to death.¹¹⁰

It is no secret that as the bloody insurgency waged by the Boko Haram since 2009 intensified, so too did the brutality of the Nigerian military’s response. Since the start of the conflict, Amnesty International has been documenting and highlighting human rights abuses perpetrated by both sides. But the report released today, “Stars on their Shoulders, Blood on their Hands,” goes further than ever before. Not only does it reveal incontrovertible evidence of the horrifying scale and depravity of war crimes committed by the military, it also shows that military commanders either sanctioned the abuses or ignored the fact that they were taking place.¹¹¹

This report is based on years of research and analysis – including hundreds of leaked military reports and correspondence and interviews with more than 400 victims, eyewitnesses, and senior members of the Nigerian security forces. We have found that more than 7,000 young men and boys died in military detention since March 2011. In addition, more than 1,200 people were rounded-up and unlawfully killed by the military since February 2012. And Amnesty International’s evidence suggests that the vast majority of those arrested, detained, or killed were not members of Boko Haram.¹¹²We have found that more than 7,000 young men and boys died in military detention since March 2011. In addition, more than 1,200 people were rounded-up and unlawfully killed by the military since February 2012.¹¹³

Often based on the word of unidentified informants, and with no other evidence against them, more than 20,000 young men and boys — some as young as nine — have since 2009 been arrested and incarcerated without investigation or trial in the most degrading, brutal, and inhuman conditions. On arrival at a detention center, one detainee described how he was greeted by a solider with the words: “Welcome to your die house. Welcome to your place of death.”¹¹⁴

Thousands never emerged alive.¹¹⁵Some died of starvation, dehydration, or preventable disease. Others suffocated in poorly ventilated cells or were tortured to death, hung on poles over fires, tossed into deep pits, shot, or electrocuted. To try to combat the spread of disease and stifle the stench, some cells were regularly fumigated with powerful chemicals. This is likely to have been the cause of many deaths.¹¹⁶

In 2013, more than 4,700 bodies were brought from Giwa barracks to a mortuary in Maidugari. Amnesty International researchers witnessed emaciated corpses in mortuaries. One senior military officer told Amnesty International that detention centers are not given sufficient money for food and that detainees in Giwa barracks were “deliberately starved.”¹¹⁷ Leaked internal military documents show categorically that senior military officials were regularly updated on the high rates of deaths among detainees through daily field reports, letters, and assessment reports sent by field commanders to the defense and army headquarters. Nigeria’s military leadership therefore knew, or should have known, about the nature and scale of the crimes being committed.¹¹⁸

For years, the Nigerian authorities have downplayed accusations of human rights abuses by the military. In October 2014, at a workshop on civil-military cooperation, then-President Goodluck Jonathan said that the government takes reports about human rights violations by the security forces very seriously, but “Findings, have generally shown that these reports are, in the main, exaggerated.”¹¹⁹

But the Nigerian government cannot dismiss its own internal military documents. It cannot ignore testimonies from witnesses and high-ranking military whistle blowers. And it cannot deny the existence of emaciated and mutilated bodies piled on mortuary slabs and dumped in mass graves.¹²⁰

Based on the evidence we have collected, Amnesty International is taking the unusual step of naming nine senior Nigerian military figures who we believe should be investigated for individual or command responsibility for these crimes. Nigeria’s new government now must immediately set up independent and impartial investigations, not just of those named in this report, but of all those responsible for the war crimes detailed, no matter their rank or position.¹²¹

Faced with the lawless brutality and violence of Boko Haram, the need for a government that respects human rights and the rule of law for all is more vital than ever. The commitments made by President Buhari at his inauguration will give hope those fighting to end impunity in Nigeria and those desperate to find out what has happened to their loved ones. But a man is not judged on his words. He is judged on his actions. Nigeria has the ability to properly investigate these crimes and President Buhari’s statements indicate he has the will to make it happen. There is no time to waste.¹²²

Again, in December 2015, barely six months in power that the Nigerian Army killed hundreds of unarmed Shiite members in Zaria in one of the worst recorded history of the Nigerian military in the process of violating the rights of the citizens. The leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzacky and his wife were thereafter arrested and detained till date despite all court orders to release them on bail. (Only recently was the wife released and Kaduna State Government has decided to appeal the release.) El-Zakzacky’s son was killed in the attack. Several demonstrations by the group members took place in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in which scores were killed by the Police. There has been no admission of guilt by the Nigerian Army for any wrongdoing over this tragic incident till date. Neither has there been any public or private apology to the families and relatives of the victims of these extra-judicial killings in broad days. The Nigerian State remained uncompromising in its pugilist stand against the Shiites.

#EndSars protest nationwide in October 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic revealed the dirty fangs of the brutal hands of Buhari administration. The #EndSars protests which actually started in Delta State but came to berth at the shores of Lagos State at Lekki Toll Gate revealed the depth of venality and intolerance of Buhari administration towards peaceful protests, the youth in particular, their social yearnings and legitimate demands. The crackdown that followed the peaceful protests, however, did not come as a surprise if the teleology or ontology of utterances by President Muhammadu Buhari on the Nigerian youths prior to that time is taken into consideration as foreground to the tragedy of October 2020 especially in Lagos State. The APC-led government and President Buhari in particular showed the whole world through that incident that youth lives do not matter, that they are dispensable, they can be used and dumped; and finally their lives are worth nothing. Through the #EndSars protests, the Military-Police authoritarian character of the Nigerian State graphically revealed itself.  

In short, Nigerian Military, Police and the DSS have never had any iota of respect for the fundamental human rights of Nigerian citizens. But is this really enough reason to deny Nigeria the arms it is requesting from the US?

Is Nigeria the Worst Human Rights Violator?

US supported the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet of Peru till his last days in power. Pinochet’s Peru was one of the worst human rights violators in the world ever known with thousands of Peruvians losing their lives and disappearing never to be found again. US constantly supplied arms to Peru during Pinochet’s era.

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was a Chilean Army General, politician and military dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being self-declared President of the Republic by the junta in 1974 and becoming the de facto dictator of Chile, and after from 1981 to 1990 as de jure President after a new Constitution, which confirmed him in the office, was approved by a referendum in 1980.¹²³

Almost immediately after the military’s seizure of power, the junta banned all the leftist parties that had constituted Allende’s UP coalition. All other parties were placed in “indefinite recess” and were later banned outright. The government’s violence was directed not only against dissidents but also against their families and other civilians.¹²⁴

The Rettig Report concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence. According to the later Valech Report approximately 31,947 were tortured and 1,312 exiled. The exiles were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies. In Latin America, this was made in the frame of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by a United States CIA communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to “save the country from communism”. In 2011, the commission identified an additional 9,800 victims of political repression during Pinochet’s rule, increasing the total number of victims to approximately 40,018, including 3,065 killed.¹²⁵

Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the most infamous cases of human rights violation occurred during the early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed throughout the country by the Caravan of Death. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, both U.S. journalists, “disappeared”, as did Víctor Olea Alegría, a member of the Socialist Party, and many others, in 1973. British priest Michael Woodward, who vanished within 10 days of the coup, was tortured and beaten to death aboard the Chilean naval ship, Esmeralda.¹²⁶

Many other important officials of Allende’s government were tracked down by the DINA in the frame of Operation Condor. General Carlos Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende’s government, was assassinated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. A year later, the murder of 119 opponents abroad was disguised as an internal conflict, the DINA setting up a propaganda campaign to support this idea (Operation Colombo), a campaign publicised by the leading newspaper in Chile, El Mercurio.¹²⁷

Other victims of Condor included, among hundreds of less famous persons, Juan José Torres, the former President of Bolivia, assassinated in Buenos Aires on 2 June 1976; Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat working for the CEPAL, assassinated in July 1976; Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende’s cabinet, assassinated after his release from internment and exile in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on 21 September 1976. Documents confirm that Pinochet directly ordered the assassination of Letelier. This led to strained relations with the US and to the extradition of Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for the DINA and had organized Letelier’s assassination. Other targeted victims, who escaped assassination, included Christian-Democrat Bernardo Leighton, who escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian terrorist Stefano delleChiaie; Carlos Altamirano, the leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet, along with VolodiaTeitelboim, member of the Communist Party; Pascal Allende, the nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, who escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976; US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between death threats and his denunciation of Operation Condor, etc. Furthermore, according to current investigations, Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democrat President of Chile from 1964 to 1970, may have been poisoned in 1982 by toxin produced by DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios.¹²⁸

Protests continued, however, during the 1980s, leading to several scandals. In March 1985, the murder of three Communist Party members led to the resignation of César Mendoza, head of the Carabineros and member of the junta since its formation. During a 1986 protest against Pinochet, 21-year-old American photographer Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri and 18-year-old student Carmen Gloria Quintana were burnt alive, with only Carmen surviving.¹²⁹

In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate Pinochet on 7 September 1986), was assassinated by a group of military personnel who were supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso’s public prosecutor. However, they simply executed him; this case was included in the Rettig Report. Among the killed and disappeared during the military junta were 440 MIR guerrillas. In December 2015, three former DINA agents were sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of a 29-year-old theology student and activist, German Rodriguez Cortes, in 1978. That same month 62-year-old Guillermo Reyes Rammsy, a former Chilean soldier during the Pinochet years, was arrested and charged with murder for boasting of participating in 18 executions during a live phone-in to the Chilean radio show “Chacotero Sentimental”.¹³⁰

On 2 June 2017, Chilean judge Hernan Cristoso sentenced 106 former Chilean intelligence officials to between 541 days and 20 years in prison for their role in the kidnapping and murder of 16 left-wing activists in 1974 and 1975.¹³¹

When Jamal Khassoggi was murdered inside Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018, by Saudi agents for being critical of Saudi Government, US, under President Donald Trump, did not impose any sanction on Saudi Arabia. Indeed, US did not stop selling around $100 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia despite international uproar over the murder of Khassoggi. Neither has the US being critical of Saudi Arabia for its meddling in the internal affairs (civil war) in North Yemen. On the contrary, Nigeria is involved in any known internal affairs of any country. So Nigeria is not worse than Saudi Arabia in terms of human rights violation. But Saudi Arabia is not involved in internal strife (insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, separatist movements, civil unrest, etc) like Nigeria.

Many other examples can be cited to show that the US can only be regarded to be hypocritical when it cites human rights violation as the main reason for refusing to sell arms to Nigeria. Without prejudices of any sort, it is an untenable argument to say the least, critically and objectively speaking.

When in 2014 Jonathan administration sought to buy arms from the international market through South Africa to fight Boko Haram, the then opposition party, All Progressive Congress led by candidate Muhammadu Buhari let out a shout to the high heavens about how corrupt Jonathan administration was then. APC made many spurious accusations against the Jonathan administration. In fact part of the insinuations over the arms deal was that Jonathan administration wanted to use the weapons to wipe out all Northerners. APC took its campaign to the international community, indeed to the United States where the Government not to sell arms to Nigeria at this point in time. The APC-led campaign of calumny over the ill-fated arms deal formed part of the demonization of the administration that eventually contributed to its landslide victory in the 2015 general elections.

Even some Northern groups wanted to take the Service Chiefs under Jonathan administration to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for alleged war crimes ostensibly because the Chief of Army Staff then was a non-Northerner and non-Moslem. But when Buhari came to power, he appointed Service Chiefs that served more than six years amidst public protest and demand for their resignations or outright sacking because of their perceived incompetence and alleged corrupt practices. The Military has not won the war against the Boko Haram insurgency till date. Amidst the war, two military universities, Army and Air Universities, were established in the respective towns or villages of the respective Service Chiefs: Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) and Chief of Air Staff (CAS). All the Service Chiefs were later appointed as Ambassadors as a way of shielding them from public probe under the constitutional provision for immunity of certain categories of high government officials.

Now the chickens have come home to roost. APC has now met its comeuppance.

Between Super Tucano and King Cobra

The prior approval of arms sales to Nigeria (e.g. A-29 Super Tucano combat aircrafts) and the current non-approval of the AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter expose the underbelly of the Nigerian defence manufacturing industry to fill in the gaps especially for small and medium-sized weapons of all descriptions: guns, light tanks, aircrafts and naval vessels wholly made and/or manufactured in Nigeria. It is in this context that we must examine critically what the Nigerian Defence Corporation has been doing over the years. But this is a subject for another day.

Ironically, Nigeria discourages, with extreme hostility, all locally-made weapons, stifling the local content development in terms of research and development in the process – but prefer to rely exclusively on import. While the Nigerian State is seen doing this, it has not done anything serious to curb smuggling of arms by insurgents, bandits, kidnappers and killer herdsmen which now collectively threaten the internal security fabric of the nation. Citizens are not allowed to even legally bear arms for self-defense purposes against all agents of insecurity and merchants of death.

However, whenever anything is manufactured by the Nigerian Defence Corporation, it looks more like an indescribable monstrous entity. It neither looks like a toad, orangutan or chimpanzee squatting down dejectedly, evoking pity or contempt. If it is an airplane or helicopter, no one knows how to describe it. It neither looks like a flying squirrel, a bird or worse still, a paper kite. When its engine starts, it roars with thunderous noise like thunder-claps sending all living around diving for cover!

The situation exposes the fundamental structural weaknesses or flaws in our defense posture contrary to what we have been hitherto made to believe about the prowess of the Nigerian Armed Forces. In short it reveals that our defense posture lacks substance – that there is nothing to write home about it. The Nigerian Armed Forces has been a disaster waiting to happen. The logic is very simple: the extent of its ontological failure over the last twelve years to defeat Boko Haram insurgency is the extent of the strength of Boko Haram itself. All other explanations are peripheral or mere addendum to the above core logic. What this means is that if the Boko Haram has been stronger than what we know of it today, it would have completely overwhelm the Nigerian Armed Forces, hence the Nigerian State, and the Nigerian State would have since fallen and cease to be. This logic can be stretched further to show that the reason why Boko Haram has not crushed the Nigerian Armed Forces, and why the Nigerian State still exist, was that it did not start from the very beginning from the position of strength, did not start with enough strength to roundly crush the Nigerian Armed Forces. It started as a ragtag band of guerilla soldiers that did not know what they were fighting for, did not know what they were doing, and did not do any risk evaluation of the strength of the Nigerian Armed Forces. If it had done such risk analysis or evaluation, it would have probably concluded that they will have to wait a bit to gather enough strength before launching attack on the Nigerian State at the time it did in July 2009. But of course, we know the chain of events, what led to what at that point in time. It, however, shows its own lack of strategic thinking which is the Achilles Heel that the Nigerian State should have exploited to crush Boko Haram and finish off or decapitate it before ever having the chance to morph into the Frankenstein monster it is today.

Unfortunately, other extraneous factors have penetrated the strategic terrain of the Nigerian Military High Command and hold it captive or hostage. To the Nigerian Military High Command today, Boko Haram is “God-sent” lucrative business franchise with which it can continue to enrich itself at the expense of the security of the citizens and sovereign legitimacy of the Nigerian State – since the military is no longer in political power and therefore has only scant interest in the survival of the sovereign entity called Nigeria. Otherwise, it would have thrown itself into a life-or-death battle with the insurgents.

Apologists of the Nigerian State and the Nigerian military may wish to protest the logic of the above thinking. They are free to do so but it does not remove the saliency of the thinking since nothing is impossible to think about that does not lie or exist in the realm of thinking or though. That is the incontrovertible adamantine Law of Thinking/Epistemological Law.  

The Bell AH-1 Cobra is a single-engined attack helicopter developed and manufactured by the American rotorcraft manufacturer Bell Helicopter. A member of the prolific Huey family, the AH-1 is also referred to as the HueyCobra or Snake.¹³²

The AH-1 was developed using the engine, transmission and rotor system of the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, which had proven itself to be a capable platform during the Vietnam War. It was produced in response to fulfil a need for a dedicated armed escort for transport helicopters to give the latter greater survivability in contested environments. Accordingly, the AH-1 was a dedicated attack helicopter, featuring a tandem cockpit, stub wings for weapons, and a chin-mounted gun turret. The first examples of the type entered service with the United States Army during 1967; other branches of the US military also opted to acquire the type, particularly the United States Marine Corps, while export sales were made to numerous overseas countries, including Israel, Japan, and Turkey.¹³³

For several decades, the AH-1 formed the core of the US Army’s attack helicopter fleet, seeing combat in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. In US Army service, the Cobra was progressively replaced by the newer and more capable Boeing AH-64 Apache during the 1990s, with the final examples being withdrawn during 2001. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) operated the Cobra most prolifically along its land border with Lebanon, using its fleet intensively during the 1982 Lebanon War. Turkish AH-1s have seen regular combat with Kurdish insurgents near Turkey’s southern borders. Upgraded versions of the Cobra have been developed, such as the twin engined AH-1 SeaCobra/SuperCobra and the experimental Bell 309 KingCobra. Furthermore, surplus AH-1 helicopters have been reused for other purposes, including civilian ones; numerous examples have been converted to perform aerial firefighting operations.¹³⁴

That A-29 Super Tucano aircrafts were previously approved for sale to Nigeria is and could not be the basis for expectation that the sales of AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters would automatically be sold to Nigeria. It is indeed a very wrong-headed expectation.

The sales of A-29 Super Tucano aircrafts to Nigeria was approved by Obama administration. It was signed and sealed as a binding contractual agreement under Obama administration. Fortuitously, Joe Biden was part of Obama administration as the Vice President. However, it should be noted that the execution and delivery on that contractual agreement could not be carried out even under Trump administration despite the expectation to the contrary, despite the seemingly political support that President Donald Trump enjoyed from Nigeria as an unruly, cantankerous and dictatorial tendencies that he exhibited throughout his term.

It fell on the shoulders of President Joe Biden to implement and deliver on the already approved sales of the Tucano aircrafts. It should also be noted that it has taken almost six years for this delivery to take place. That is very significant in itself considering the numbers of lives and properties that have been lost to the insurgency and banditry within the same period.

It is also a wrong-headed expectation that the sales of the Cobra helicopters and other appurtenances would automatically be approved for sale to Nigeria. It has never been approved by any administration in the US. The process of approval has not been completed at all as objections around human rights concerns in Nigeria are being raised by Congress that has the final say on the matter – objections that have not been clarified and debunked by the Nigerian Government. Nigeria has not issued any statement regarding the concerns about human rights abuses in Nigeria that are well documented by various international human rights bodies of which the US Government is fully aware apart from it has compiled by itself by its relevant agencies.

Thus it is an outburst of emotions to start crying over something that has not been approved at all in the first place. In the second place, the objections raised are very fundamental, objections that go to the core of governance in Nigeria, of how the Government regard and treat its own citizens, all of which cannot be waved aside or swept under the carpet at all.

The sales of the Cobra helicopters were put on hold to enable the Congress including the White House to reassess the American relationship with Nigeria based on certain observations that were not disclosed. Chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, called for a “fundamental rethink of the framework of our overall engagement” with Nigeria during a Senate hearing with US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken in June. This is the crux of the whole controversy. Congress is saying that the United States would or should not rush to sell these arms to Nigeria until certain matters are clarified and settled to their satisfaction – matters relating to the very foundation of the relationship between the two countries. Congress is saying the extant framework of the relationship between the two countries is no longer acceptable.

Thus too, the bipartisan calls from both sides of the aisle in the US Congress for the reassessment and/or review of the US-Nigeria bilateral relationship and engagement rules speaks volume. US Congress is looking and seeing Nigeria with new eyes. The old eyes, if there are any, no longer suffice. The White House is probably buying into this necessary enterprise of reassessment/review of the bilateral relationship since President Joe Biden has made human rights issues, for instance, a corner-piece of his foreign policy. President Biden is not a novice at all in this domain since he has spent a significant part of his political career in the Congress in this foreign policy and security-related domains. He cannot be fooled neither can he be bought over by sweet talks to whitewash critical issues going to the core its foreign policy and vital national security interests. He is not the type of person moved by emotions but by iron-clad objectivity of a situation. So Nigerian President is dealing with somebody that cannot easily be moved by some small clever arguments – unlike the Nigerian President that is well known for his personal foibles with particular reference to his parochialism, barely-concealed bigotry and combustible pronouncements.

In short, US-Nigeria bilateral relationship has reached a watershed with this statement. It is rather a statement of indictment of the past and present that the relationship can no longer continue as it had been, that new paradigms and parameters are needed going forward. Looking critically at the statement, it reveals how the Americans are now looking at Nigeria, that they are longer satisfied with the business-as-usual approach and rules of engagement with Nigeria; that they are not satisfied with the overall performance of Nigeria; that Nigeria has fallen below expectations; that they need to crack the hard nut that Nigeria has become because of its irresponsible leadership, etc.

But what has become glaring, and unfortunately so, is that the Nigerian Military has no enough sophisticated weaponry (including necessary combat aircrafts and helicopters) to tackle the hybrid but multifaceted insecurity that is now bleeding the nation slowly to death. Most worrisome in this regard is the Nigerian Air Force in its now glaring parlous state of almost empty arsenal of modern combat aircrafts and helicopters. This is why Nigerian can be seen crying like a baby after been deprived of AH-1 Cobra attack choppers, or that is why Nigerian is seen running here and there to buy Super Tucano aircrafts and Cobra attack choppers.

What has led to this sorry state of affairs in the NAF can be guessed right away: massive corruption over the decades that have consistently deprived Nigeria of modern warbirds. This need to be further interrogated critically. The boots on the ground, i.e. troops have no sufficient air supports. That is why it has been easy for the insurgents to lay ambushes for the advancing troops, maul them and collect their weapons for their own uses – and get away from time to time because there are often no air coverage for the movement of the Nigerian troops going to the battlefield to confront the insurgents and uproot them from their hideouts. The same thing goes for the bandits.

There have been unverified reports in the social media showing where and how soldiers were seeing running away from bandits because they have no weapons to match or counter the fairly sophisticated guns wielded by the bandits. Worse still, there are pictures of Governors and other high government officials including clerics with the bandits, thus raising the question of could be the secret relationship between these government officials and the men of underworld (bandits). Again, this also raises the question of where the bandits got their weapons from – the weapon types that are not within the armoury of the Nigerian Army.

Yet in the midst of the pandemic of corruption within the military, the three Services (Army, Air Force and Navy) are building new educational facilities outside the existing traditional training institutions that can be seen not to be properly managed. The Army allowed an Army University to be built in Biu in Borno where the former Chief of Army Staff, retired Lt General Yusuf TukurBuratai hails from. Borno State is the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency. Throughout his six-year tenure as the CoAS, the insurgency could not be uprooted from the State. The Air Force equally allowed an Air University to be built in Bauchi State where the former Chief of Air Staff also hails from, while the Navy now has a major Training School in Kano State – all with the brazen ironies flung at the public face with utmost insensitivity as represented by this development typology. 

Muhammadu Buhari-led APC-controlled government and President Buhari himself are seen caught in this epochal dilemma of their inability to tackle corruption in the military (and the larger society as a whole) despite their promises to do so – a mantra that fueled the vehicle that brought them to power in the 2015 general elections. President Buhari himself acknowledged the insidious existence of the bacillus of massive corruption within the Nigerian Military during his first state visit to the United States in July 2015 as already shown above. Yet six and half years later (with one and half years left to leave Aso Rock), President Buhari-led government has not been able to punish a single military officer for the alleged corruption to serve as deterrence or even for record purpose.

President Buhari can be seen trapped between the historic need to rid the military of the alleged corruption and rebuild a new military from ground up on the one hand, and his nepotistic attitude towards appointment into the highest echelon of the military command which prevented him from fulfilling that historic need and call. Thus it can be seen how easy it is to talk glibly about unsavoury phenomenal reality but difficult to act in deed to correct such phenomenon. Thus it can be seen how difficult to carry out reforms of an already ossified or concretized deformed structure of our military and security establishments. It can also be seen that reality is often different from wishful thinking or day-dreaming, between illusion, delusion and stark reality of the world. This is said without prejudices to the ethnic origin of the political actors in this farcical drama of the epoch in the Nigerian military and the overall political history of the nation.

Thus it can be seen how justified, arising out moral indignation, are foreign superpowers (United States in this case study) in depriving Nigeria of the needed weapons to combat the growing insecurity in the country. What the United States has been consistently telling Nigeria is: go and sort yourself out of the messy holes of corruption that have criminally dug around yourself in which you are now sinking fast. We can’t help you do that and we will not be persuaded against our conscience for you to remain perpetually in that condition. You must summon political will to do that yourself. Sorry, my friend!

On the contrary, if the USG goes beyond its moral compass to sell the requested arms to Nigeria and without any improvement in the position of the Nigerian Military and in our security condition, it is obvious that it would be the same Nigerians that will come out to roundly condemn the USG with their high-falutin grammars for aiding and abetting a regime that is glaringly incompetent in managing human and material resources, etc. USG is clearly seeing that moral trap with its two eyes opened. It would be foolhardy to fall into that trap. It is better and safer to avoid that trap.

Conclusion

Ordinarily, the US Congressional refusal to approve the sales of certain arms to Nigeria should not have generated so much flak essentially because Nigeria could have easily decided to go to another country to buy whatever it want for whatever purposes. But it is not as simple as that as one may think because quite lot of factors and forces are involved from both countries (the United States and Nigeria) including other quarters that led to the stalemate at this point in time.

Most of the recent reportages on this development ignored precisely most of those factors and forces at work that serve as the background context for understanding the dynamics underlining the US Congressional action and the protest from the Nigerian side. Therefore, these reportages lack penetrating new and deep insights. They suffer from cognitive dissonance. The background context is naturally historical, and understanding of this history is necessarily compelling. And when these historical forces and its underpinnings are brought face-to-face with the present reality, the picture of what is acting as vectors or levers of action and reaction from both sides respectively can now be laid bare and understood in their full scopes.

Reviewing the reportage of what is publicly known about this development, keen observers would not have failed to notice that Nigeria has not been able to offer any strong moral, legal or even political counter-narrative or defense against the decision of the US Congress/US Government in withholding the sales of the Cobra helicopters and associated weapons to Nigeria. This cannot be far from epistemological malady of the Nigerian State for which no remedy has been found so far. The current statecraft in the country suffers immensely from epistemological deficit which has not been bridged within the institutional frameworks of management Nigeria’s internal security and foreign policy. This is the philosophical mess which Nigeria has plunge itself where there has been no self-examination ever about the allegations of egregious violations of human rights in Nigeria – the very issue that forms the fundamental gravamen of the decision not to sell such fairly sophisticated arms to Nigeria – which are taken to be fundamental to the decision-making process in the inner sanctum of the American Government for which no Nigerian has no access, even if there are no other extraneous excuses for withholding the arms sales to Nigeria.

From business or economic perspective, the decision of the US Congress to withhold approval for the sales of the controversial choppers that have been dragging since the era of Obama administration may not make sense as the huge amount of money to be paid by Nigeria stands the risk of being lost to the US. But the reverse thinking is probably the case with the US as the US Congress does not seem to care about the pecuniary aspect at all. US Congress, indeed, is not looking at the sales of the choppers and other arms from business/economic or profit-making perspective at all. It is, rather, looking strictly at the whole issue from political perspective with eyes to the present and future realities in Nigeria.

The present and future realities in Nigeria do not bode well for any keen and impartial observer. With all the unsavory developments that have taken place in Nigeria in recent decades, the political realities in Nigeria speak volume for strategic contemplation in the present time and for the future of Nigeria. More worrisome is the gradual destruction of confidence and faith in the ability of the Nigerian State/Nigerian Military and security agencies to protect, safeguard the security and welfare of Nigerians. Painfully, there is lack of justice for the families and relatives of victims of the various horrendous crimes being committed with impunity against the person and the State itself: murder, rape, looting, arson and other forms of destruction of properties by insurgents, bandits, kidnappers, herdsmen killers, armed robbers, oil thieves, etc. Additionally, there is also gradual destruction of normative social values and mores.

The refusal of the US Congress to rush to approve for sales to Nigeria arms as requested by Nigeria until certain conditions are met signals that the hitherto considered romantic US-Nigeria bilateral relationship has reached a critical turning point or watershed where this relationship calls for reappraisal as being demanded by the US Congress. What this suggests is that certain things are not right or are not in proper places and contexts in this bilateral relationship. This bilateral relationship hitherto considered sweet and yum-yum most the times have become sour, irritating and is now causing febrile acrimony on both sides.

The grave implication of the US Congressional action is that it serves as a cautionary note for other countries, especially Western European countries including countries like Canada, Japan, Israel, Australia, etc, to thread carefully with Nigeria. The US action serves as a beginning of new wisdom. If a traditional ally of Nigeria could suddenly developed cold feet in selling arms to a long-standing friend despite the huge amount of money involved, it serves as blown whistle for others to be cautious.

Nigeria may not have realized this ominous implication or sign because it is still shackled by “business-as-usual” theoretical straight-jacket and is going about bragging that it “can always get whatever it wants from the US Government”, a braggadocio that reeks of insufferable arrogance that is very unrealistic in the light of international factors and forces (dynamics) that are increasingly encroaching and reducing its bargaining or maneuvering space.

Only an incurable fool will not see that Nigeria is being played or kicked around like a football by superpowers who have earlier promised to help Nigeria overcome her security problems over the years. Nobody does that in the real sense of it except where it has maximum advantages to gain, advantages that in the final analysis that compromise one’s internal security. And that is seemingly what has happened with Nigeria in the last few years where every Tom, Dick and Harry comes around with baseless or empty barrels or baskets of promises – and swallowed hook-line-and-sinker by an administration that lacks epistemological understanding of modern statecraft. Boko Haram insurgency has been with Nigeria for twelve years now. Yet those “helps” are always hanging on the tree where hand cannot reach to pluck them – or loitering in the corners without anybody seeing them.

It is a forked road, an epochal dilemma of a State, due fundamentally to a badly managed political system, due to faulty operational epistemological structures, a broken system to be specific. Nigeria may hobble along, limping with rickety crutches. It may pretend that nothing is wrong; that indeed what is wrong is the lack of understanding and sympathy from that heartless “Beast”called the United States that enjoy bullying everybody around, that does not want to help Nigeria overcome its own self-inflicted woes, and all those foolish childish arguments.

It is left to Nigeria to reassess itself, to see whether, per chance is at fault after all, rather than blame others “who did  not send you any message” as the saying goes in Nigeria.