Fourteen months after the election of
President Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria, the Obama administration is
considering selling his government 12 warplanes. It is a thorny decision
because Mr. Buhari is an improvement over his disastrous predecessor,
Goodluck Jonathan, and is fighting Boko Haram, the Islamist extremists
who have terrorised the region. But he has not done enough to end
corruption and respond to charges that the army has committed war crimes
in its fight against the group. Selling him the planes now would be a
mistake.
Under Mr. Buhari, Nigeria has cooperated
more with Chad and Niger to fight Boko Haram. The group, which emerged
in the early 2000s, has seized land in the northeastern, predominantly
Muslim section of Nigeria. Thousands of people have been killed and 2.2
million displaced. The group’s depravity captured world attention in
2014 when it kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school.
While violence is down and some hitherto
occupied territories have been recaptured, the group continues to attack
remote villages and refugee camps, and it is using women and children
as suicide bombers. American military officials say that Boko Haram has
begun collaborating with the Islamic State and that the groups could be
planning attacks on American allies in Africa.
Yet Nigeria’s government cannot be
entrusted with the versatile new warplanes, which can be used for ground
attacks as well as reconnaissance. Its security services have long
engaged in extrajudicial killings, torture and rape, according to the
State Department’s latest annual human rights report. Amnesty
International says that during the army’s scorched-earth response to
Boko Haram between 2011 and 2015, more than 8,200 civilians were
murdered, starved or tortured to death.
The Obama administration was so concerned
about this record that two years ago it blocked Israel’s sale of
American-made Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria and ended American
training of Nigerian troops. American officials even hesitated to share
intelligence with the military, fearing it had been infiltrated by Boko
Haram. That wariness has eased and American officials say they are now
working with some Nigerian counterparts.
Since winning election on a reform
platform, Mr. Buhari has moved to root out graft and to investigate
human rights abuses by the military. But the State Department said
Nigerian “authorities did not investigate or punish the majority of
cases of police or military abuse” in 2015.
That hardly seems like an endorsement for
selling the aircraft. Tim Rieser, a top aide to Senator Patrick Leahy,
who wrote the law barring American aid to foreign military units accused
of abuses, told The Times that “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.”
To defeat Boko Haram, which preys on
citizens’ anger at the government, Mr. Buhari will need more than
weapons. He has to get serious about improving governance and providing
jobs, roads and services in every region of Nigeria. Until then or until
Congress develops ways to monitor the planes’ use, it should block the
sale.
•This New Times Editorial was published on May 18, 2016
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