Military operations
Buhari shuns US, enlists Russian aid against insurgents
Sopuruchi Onwuka
After botched attempts by the government to procure military equipment from the United States, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is signing on Russia for military cooperation that would involve supply of military hardware and personnel training.
Agency sources reported the Nigerian embassy in Moscow as saying that on Nigeria and Russia signed a military pact that provides legal framework for the supply of equipment and the training of troops.
“The Agreement on Military-Technical Cooperation between both countries provides a legal framework for the supply of military equipment, provision of after sales services, training of personnel in respective educational establishments and technology transfer, among others,” the Nigerian embassy said in a statement.
It described the pact as a landmark development in bilateral relations between Abuja and Moscow.
The military deal with Russia comes after the United States turned down an earlier billion dollar deal to sell Nigeria weapons and ammunitions for counter-insurgency operations, especially in the Northeastern part of the country where the deadly Boko Haram group has worn down the resilience of federal soldiers.
A Reuters report in July stated that U.S. lawmakers had put a hold the proposal over concerns about possible human rights abuses by the Nigerian government troops who were at the time accused of indiscriminate arrest, intimidation, and extrajudicial killing of youths in the southeastern parts of the country.
Reports of unprofessional conduct of federal security forces was exacerbated by the open threat by President Buhari on the people of the South East zone of the country to raise international concerns about human right abuses and safety of political opponents of the president.
Rising concerns and spates of public outcry over brutal invasion of the southeastern Nigeria on the orders of President Buhari had contributed to the delay of the proposed sale of 12 attack helicopters and related equipment by the Unites States’ Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
With uncertainty over the progress of the military equipment deal with the US and other western countries, President Muhammadu Buhari might have reactivated earlier interest to reach a military pact with Russia.
Agency sources reported that President Buhari had discussed the deal with Russian President, Vladimir Putin during the Russia-Africa summit in 2019.
The Nigerian ambassador to Russia had said Buhari felt Russia could help defeat the Boko Haram Islamic insurgency in the northeast of the country, which remains a major problem.
Nigeria already uses some Russian fighter jets and helicopters, alongside military equipment purchased from Western powers such as the United States.
It would be recalled that the All Progressive Congress (APC) had prevailed on former President Barak Obama of the United States to decline sale of military hardware to former President Goodluck Jonathan who desperately needed the weapons to help the military nip the Boko Haram insurgency in the bud.
President Buhari has in turn been accused of wielding kid gloves against the insurgents with whom he is also accused of sharing ethnic and religious sentiments.
The new deal with Russian coincided with the fall of Afghanistan to insurgent Taliban forces, a similar religious extremist group t searching for territory to establish strict Islamic regimes.
