New York Times has obtained the information that American President Barack Obama is considering a trip to Nigeria in July.
During the previous government of Goodluck Jonathan the Obama government had blocked a sale of American-made attack helicopters to Nigeria from Israel because of human rights concerns.
Now less than two years after it poised to sell up to 12 light attack aircraft as part of an effort to assist the country’s fight against the Boko Haram sect.
However, the forthcoming sale is already facing the criticism from human rights organizations that say President Muhammadu Buhari of has not yet done enough to stop the abuses and corruption that flourished in the army under his predecessor.
The planned sale shows the warming of the relationship between the Nigerian and American armies, which had worn under Jonathan.
The Pentagon often bypassed Nigeria in its war against insurgents, choosing to work directly with neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
In addition to quoting corruption and sweeping human rights abuses by Nigerian soldiers, American officials were indecisive to share intelligence with the Nigerian army, saying Boko Haram had infiltrated it.
Meanwhile, since Buhari was inaugurated the president he has devoted himself to rooting out graft in Africa’s largest economy.
He has sacked a number of Nigerian army officers blamed for corruption, and American military officials say they are now working closely with some of their counterparts in Nigeria.
The Obama government is also considering sending dozens of Special Operations advisers to the front lines of the war against insurgents that has killed thousands of civilians in the country’s northeast as well as in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
President Buhari has also promised to probe allegations of human rights abuses and has said he will not tolerate them.
The US government has not made an official decision to send a notification to Congress, but a senior administration official said he expected one soon.
Assistants of Mr. Leahy, a sponsor of a human rights law that bans the State Department and Pentagon from giving army help to foreign military 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.
“The United States is committed to working with Nigeria and its neighbors against Boko Haram,” said David McKeeby, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
“The Nigerian security forces and regional forces from Cameroon, Chad and Niger have made important progress in pushing Boko Haram out of many towns and villages of northeast Nigeria and the broader Lake Chad basin region.”
Under the government of Jonathan the Nigerian army was accused by human rights groups of detaining and killing thousands of innocent civilians in sweeps of the militant group, a practice that Amnesty International said was continuing.
This year the army rounded up several hundred men and boys in arrests that Amnesty, in a report it released last week, called “arbitrary, the hazardous profiling based on sex and age of the individual rather than on evidence of crime.”
The AI report stated that 149 people had died this year in custody in the Nigerian army Giwa barracks in Maiduguri, a city that has been a staging ground for the fight against Boko Haram.
However, the Nigerian army called the report “completely baseless, unfounded and source-less with the intent of denting the image of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”
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