•US’ explanation on arms sale to Nigeria makes sense
In what appears a misdirected aggression, Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, Adebowale Adefuye, has accused the American government of refusing to sell to Nigeria the needed weapons to deal the death knell on Boko Haram. Adefuye told members of the Council on Foreign Relations last week Monday that: “The Nigerian leadership … are not satisfied with the scope, nature and content of the United States’ support for us in our struggle against terrorists.”
He added: “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.” An apparently disgruntled Adefuye even went philosophical: “A friend in need is a friend indeed. The true test of friendship is in the times of adversity”.
Much as we can understand Adefuye’s frustrations over the Boko Haram insurgency, it is myopic to blame the American government for what is clearly a failure of the Nigerian government and its security agencies. Terrorism may be a matter for global concern, but it is the primary responsibility of the Nigerian government to ensure security of lives and property within its jurisdiction. Outsiders might only give a helping hand, a thing the U.S. government claimed it had been doing since the insurgents became more daring, abducting school girls and bombing schools at will. Ambassador Adefuye could wax as philosophical as he chooses to. But, he should not be talking as if the United States owes Nigeria an obligation to quell Boko Haram.
Indeed, that the U.S. government has denied his allegation further lends credence to the fact that the Nigerian government was only shopping for excuses for its incompetence in fighting Boko Haram. According to the State Department spokesperson, Jen Psaki, the U.S. had in the past six months provided and approved sales of military equipment to Nigeria’s armed forces. She added that America had also shared intelligence with Nigeria, started training a new army battalion and had held numerous high-level discussions with the Federal Government on additional measures to best address the Boko Haram threat.
According to her, the only area where the U.S. had refused to cooperate with Nigeria was in the transfer of Cobra helicopters to Nigeria. And this is due to “…concerns about Nigeria’s ability to use and maintain this type of helicopter in its effort against Boko Haram and ongoing concerns about the Nigerian military’s protection of civilians when conducting military operations.”
As a matter of fact, this was an issue Ambassador Adefuye was economical with the truth on. Apparently, the ambassador has forgotten that the world is now a global village, hence his denial that there are human rights abuses in the country; a thing he dismissed off-handedly as “rumours, hear-says and exaggerated accounts” spread by Jonathan’s rivals and human rights groups with an agenda.
Anyway, as the U.S. rightly observed, if Nigeria felt bad that it was not ready to sell to us the weapons that would give Boko Haram the “killer punch” that Adefuye talked about, what stops it from exploring other sources for its arms needs? Why the fixation with the U.S.? Or, is America the sole producer of arms?
What the Nigerian government forgets is that the mere fact that it is trampling on rule of law with impunity is enough to want to make people distrust it with too much sophisticated weapons. Which sane country would want to sell arms to a country where impunity reigns? America has a right to insist on selling arms to those who can manage it responsibly because of the wider implications of having such weapons in wrong hands. This is much more so in a country that deploys heavily armed soldiers and hooded security agents for elections. An online commentator sarcastically sums it up: “Maybe they need the weapons to conduct a peaceful election”!
