After a four-day official visit in the United
States of America, President Muhammadu Buhari will be returning to Nigeria
today with no pledge of concrete military assistance against Boko Haram
terrorists from his hosts.
The US government told the Nigerian leader
that its arms are tied by an American law, the Leahy Act, which prevents it
from selling arms to countries with human rights abuse records.
President Buhari, who is returning home
displeased, told the US government that the refusal by America to arm Nigerian
troops because of “so-called human rights violations” and “unproven
allegations,” would only help Boko Haram.
A global human rights watch group, Amnesty
International, had recently accused the Nigerian military under former
President Goodluck Jonathan of gross human rights abuses in the prosecution of
the war on terrorists.
The Nigerian military forces had denied the
allegation which President Buhari pledged to investigate.
Buhari “departs with little practical military
assistance in his battle against the Islamist militants who have turned the
northeast of his country into a bloody war zone,” the Associated Press (AP)
reported on Wednesday.
The US government has vowed to help Nigeria
defeat the insurgency but it is prohibited under law from sending weapons to
countries that fail to tackle human rights abuses.
“Regrettably, the blanket application of the
Leahy Law by the United States on the grounds of unproven allegations of human
rights violations levelled against our forces has denied us access to
appropriate strategic weapons to prosecute the war,” Buhari said.
Addressing an audience of policy-makers,
activists and academics in Washington, Buhari complained that Nigerian forces
had been left “largely impotent” in the face of Boko Haram’s campaign of
kidnapping and bombings.
“They do not possess the appropriate weapons
and technology which we could have had if the so-called human rights violations
had not been an obstacle,” he said.
“Unwittingly, and I dare say unintentionally,
the application of the Leahy Law Amendment by the United States government has
aided and abetted the Boko Haram terrorists.”
He appealed to both the White House and the US
Congress to find a way around the law — introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy in
1997 — and to supply Nigerian troops with high-tech weapons under a deal “with
minimal strings.”
Since 2009, Boko Haram has been trying to
establish an Islamist breakaway state in a conflict that has seen 15,000 people
killed and 1.5 million displaced.
The group’s brutality and in particular the
mass kidnapping and enslavement of schoolgirls has shocked world opinion.
In June, rights watchdog Amnesty International
said there was sufficient evidence to launch an investigation into senior
Nigerian officers for war crimes.
In a 133-page report, the group blamed the
army for the extrajudicial execution of 1,200 people and the torture or
arbitrary detention of thousands more.
Buhari insists that the charges are not proven,
but he has replaced his senior military commanders and has promised to
investigate the allegations.
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Proof readers” [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Scott LaFaro, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 31 January 1961])Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
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