US weapons pipeline to Nigeria is becoming a crime against humanity

The very week the United States’ Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a $346 million arms sale to Nigeria, the U.S. State Department also released its 2024 Country report on human rights practices in the West African country.

The report, which has previously affected the country’s eligibility for security assistance, confirmed what civil society groups have been saying for years: that the security forces of Nigeria, Washington’s most significant ally in Sub-Saharan Africa, habitually operate with impunity and without due regard for human rights protection — a key condition for receiving U.S. security cooperation.

For example, the report spotlighted the following human rights abuses as ongoing concerns: “arbitrary and unlawful killings; disappearances; or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; serious abuses in a conflict.”

It also claimed that “military operations against ISIS-WA, Boko Haram, and criminal organization targets” often resulted in civilian deaths. Other findings include the use of “excessive force,” “sexual violence and other forms of abuse” by the military in the pursuit of jihadists, as well as inappropriate detention for prolonged periods and often in poor conditions of women and children removed from or allegedly associated with jihadists reportedly for “security screening and perceived intelligence value.”

Interestingly, the new arms sale is meant for exactly the same theater of operations where the above alleged abuses have reportedly occurred. There, in the treacherous terrain of the country’s northeast, Nigeria’s army has been fighting for more than a decade in a bloody stand-off with jihadists. The arms are also meant for use in and around the Gulf of Guinea where piracy and illegal trafficking of arms, humans and narcotics pose new challenges.

What this means therefore is that if approved, U.S.-origin weapons comprising an assortment of munitions, precision bombs, rockets and related equipment would arm units of Nigeria’s security forces whose egregious abuses bordering on war crimes are confirmed not just by civil societies but by the U.S. State Department.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been the world’s leading arms-exporting nation accounting between 2019 and 2023 for 42 percent of all global arms exports. Several laws exist ostensibly to regulate and ensure that U.S. security assistance is provided to allies without undermining America’s core values. For example, Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act expressly forbids the United States from providing security assistance to any country whose government engages in a “consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Investigations by human rights groups and the media, including Reuters and Premium Times, have uncovered a consistent pattern of abuse by security forces that suggests that Nigeria has met this threshold.

However, not once have any of the relevant legal provisions conditioning arms sales on respect for human rights and civilian harm concerns been enforced. Indeed, successive U.S. administrations since the 1970s, Democrats and Republicans alike, have routinely ignored them while there is as yet no record of Congress successfully stopping an arms sale on this account — although it has delayed some. In 2022, during the Biden administration, Congress blocked a planned shipment of 12 AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria over human rights concern, but this was soon reversed.

This divergence between what the U.S. law says and what the government actually does reflects a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Washington’s foreign policy between its human rights advocacy and the pursuit of global military primacy, in part through arms sales. It is a contradiction the world has seen play out in the bloody conflict in the Middle East where, despite carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Israel remains a top recipient of U.S. security assistance.

As the Center for Civilian in Conflict (CIVIC) noted in a recent report, Washington often “elevates other competing priorities, including addressing threats from non-state actors and strategic competition by other key powers, over concerns for civilian protection and human rights even where significant fears exist about potential misuse of U.S. security assistance.”

The contradiction has grown even more recently as America’s global hegemony faces growing challenges in an increasingly multipolar world. Therefore, besides its role in counterterrorism operations against jihadists in the Sahel, Nigeria’s potential as a likely constraint on the growing influence of China and, more recently, Russia and Turkey in Sub-Saharan Africa makes it an ally too dear to lose.

But while all U.S. administrations have ultimately prioritized America’s global military primacy over any other concerns, Trump has gone much further than most by cutting staffing and shuttering programs in the Pentagon that previously helped put human rights and civilian harms mitigation at the heart of U.S. security assistance. The net result is that today, Washington is less able to guarantee the appropriate use of U.S.-origin weapons, thus increasing the risk of abuse.

The situation is further complicated by the interest of America’s “Military Industrial Complex” to maintain profitability by selling to U.S. partners older weapons systems for which the Pentagon no longer has any use. Consequently, U.S. security assistance to Nigeria has grown exponentially over the past two decades. It includes $1.5 billion in government-to-government Foreign Military Sales and over $200 million in direct commercial sales by U.S. companies. This is in addition to a program of periodic trainings and joint military drills in which different units of Nigeria’s military have participated.

These efforts, however, have so far failed to turn the tide on the insecurity that increasingly plagues the country. Several factors are responsible, chief of which include corruption, accountability challenges, and lack of motivation among the rank and file. “As quickly as the U.S. sends money and arms, the resources are often diverted from their intended destination,” Brad Brandon, founder and CEO of Across Nigeria, observes.

Besides, acquiring advanced weaponry is one thing; the ability to use it in an effective and responsible manner is another. Despite racking up significant air strike capabilities over the years thanks mostly to U.S. security assistance, the Nigerian military continues to suffer a substantial deficit in its Air-to-Ground Integration; that is, air assets do not often have reliable communication with ground forces when targeting their bombs.

This has led to a series of catastrophic “air strike mistakes” starting with the mistaken bombing, in which the U.S. reportedly played an indirect secret role, of a displaced persons camp in Rann in Borno state in 2017 which killed more than 236 civilians. According to a Reuters analysis of violent incidents documented by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), more than 2,600 people had been killed over a period of five years in 248 air strikes by the Nigerian Air Force.

On April 10 last year, an air strike by Nigeria’s air force on a village in Zamfara state meant to eliminate bandits resulted in the killing of 33 people. Despite the acquisition, four years ago, of at least 12 Super Tucano light attack aircraft boasting enhanced air-to-ground communications capabilities, as well as precision-guided weapons-delivery systems, the carnage has continued with the most recent mishap occurring in January.

So, while Nigeria’s security sector is hopeful that the new arms package could aid the country’s air force carry out more precise strikes and thereby reduce civilian casualties, recent experience shows that this is not necessarily assured. This is because the new weaponry would be operating in institutional settings that are not only ill-suited to reducing civilian harm, but also resistant to accountability.

Washington thus would be taking a big risk if the sale goes through without extracting sufficient guarantees for the responsible use of the weaponry alongside accountability measures to protect civilians. This should be combined with restoring Pentagon programs dedicated to civilian harm mitigation to send a clear message to recipient nations where Washington stands on this crucial issue.