US approves potential $346 million weapons sale to Nigeria to bolster security

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ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The U.S. State Department approved a possible $346 million weapons sale to Nigeria to help improve security in the sub-Saharan country, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Congress was notified and would need to approve the sale, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement. The agency is a division of the Department of Defense body that provides technical assistance and oversees transfers of defense equipment.

The weapons requested by Nigeria include munitions, bombs and rockets.

A resurgence of attacks by Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadist group, has shaken Nigeria’s northeast. The group took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose its radical version of Islamic law. In recent months, Islamic extremists have repeatedly overrun military outposts, mined roads with bombs and raided civilian communities, raising fears of a possible return to the peak insecurity of the Boko Haram era despite the military’s claims of success against them.

The conflict, which has spread into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, has claimed about 35,000 civilian lives and displaced more than 2 million people in the country’s northeastern region, according to the U.N.

Apart from the insurgency in the northeast, Africa’s most populous country also faces serious security challenges in the north-central and northwest regions, where hundreds have been killed and injured in recent months.

“The proposed sale will improve Nigeria’s capability to meet current and future threats through operations against terrorist organizations and to counter illicit trafficking in Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea,” the Pentagon said Wednesday. “There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.”

In the past 10 years, Nigeria has bought military equipment from the U.S. on several occasions. Most recently, the U.S. approved a $997-million weapons sale in 2022.