US Security officials quit search for 200 Chibok girls after seven months

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”GhDAve3kS8PoYkxp54olMT8JUHvI2vE2″]
US intelligence and security experts sent in to help Nigeria at the peak of the global outcry on the abduction of over 200 Chibok girls by Boko Haram mid last year have left the country without any significant success in their targeted mission.
chibok girls

The White House had held consultations with some leaders of the BringBackOurGirls movement late last year on the terrorist kidnap of the schoolgirls and US government’s inability to offer significant help.

While the leading US newspaper, New York Times, ran a front page story on New Year day reporting that many of the US security officials have now left Nigeria, Sources also reveal that a meeting was held late last year in the White House between one of the major leaders of the BringBackOurGirls movement based in Nigeria and a senior White House official, Mr. John Podesta, President Barack Obama’s Counsellor.

According to the New York Times report, “soon after the Islamist group, Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 teenage girls in Nigeria in April, the United States sent surveillance drones and about 30 intelligence and security experts to help the Nigerian military try to rescue them,” adding that seven months later many of those advisers have returned to the US, while the girls are still held captive.

In fact the paper said the top US General for its Africa Command, Gen. David M. Rodriguez, at the peak of the global outcry had “rushed from his headquarters,” in Germany to provide help on the Nigerian crisis.

The returning of many of the 30 US officials was after the Podesta White House meeting, according to very reliable sources, even as relations between both countries started to strain over the Boko Haram insurgency and the specific case of the rescue of the Chibok girls.

SavidNews gathered that the belief in US circles are that one of the main factors that frustrated the US effort in helping Nigeria on the possible rescue of the Chibok girls was an apparent disconnect between the plans of the Presidency in Aso Rock to eventually ask for US help and the distrust of the American military on the part of the Nigerian Military High Command.

According to authoritative sources, the White House meeting, which was initiated by the BringBackOurGirls movement, was a quest by the movement to get a first-hand account from the American government on why the US help has not been productive.

At the meeting, the US government official explained all the US has put on the table to support the Nigerian government and also discussed the limitations that White House was facing in terms of military assistance to the country.

For instance, John Podesta explained at the meeting that based on the Leahy rules of the US government’s involvement with foreign military, the Nigerian military had to overcome tough restrictions to get US military assistance because of the allegations of human right abuses against the military. The Nigerian Ambassador to the US, Prof Ade Adefuye had severally denied many of those allegations here in the US over and again. But US sources said the American government remains unconvinced.

It was the John Podesta White House meeting with the BringBackOurGirls movement that produced a rather detailed set of statements from the White House late last year on the several fronts and efforts of the US government to support and assist regarding the Chibok girls.

While pro-Nigeria arguments in the US circles reject the position of the US government that it is limited in providing military assistance to the Nigerian military because of its perceived human right records, the anti-Nigerian sentiments here is that the Nigerian military is not keen on having US top military officers getting involved for fear of exposing some of its poor governance practices.

For instance, Ms. Sarah Sewall, the US undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, had last year told a US Congressional hearing that despite Nigeria’s $5.8bn security budget for 2014, “corruption prevents supplies as basic as bullets and transport vehicles from reaching the front lines of the struggle against Boko Haram.”

The argument behind those sentiments are mainly that the Nigerian Military High Command simply distrusts the military, so much that when Aso Rock eventually decided to seek US and foreign assistance there were reported claims of a dampener to such a decision among some of Nigeria’s top military leaders.

The fallout is that there is increasing tension between the US and Nigerian governments over the matter. Quoting a former US Assistant Secretary of State, Johnnie Carson, the New York Times reported that “tensions in the U.S.-Nigeria relationship are probably at their highest level in the past decade.

Johnnie Carson’s view is widely respected both in the US and Nigeria, because he was known to have a particularly positive relationship and considered as very pro-Nigerian government, while in office as the US State Department’s former top diplomat for Africa.

But he warned in that New York Times’ report that now there is a “high degree of frustration” both in the US and Nigerian government side, adding “this frustration should not be allowed to spin out of control.”

In fact, recently the US announced that the Nigerian military called off one of its training assistance programme in the country. On the other hand, the US also refused to okay the sale of America attack helicopters-Cobra, to Nigeria.

Another proof of the distrust between the US and Nigerian military, as revealed in the report is that US Africa Command officials are of the opinion that the Nigerian military is “corruption plagued, poorly equipped,” and is “in tatters.”

It was also reported that American officials did not give their Nigerian counterparts raw intelligence data regarding the insurgency in Northeast Nigeria, “because they believe that Boko Haram has infiltrated the Nigerian security services,” a view the Nigerian President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan himself promoted in the not too distant past.

New York Times added that “when the Pentagon did come up with what it calls “actionable intelligence” from the drone flights — for example, information that might have indicated the location of some of the girls — and turned it over to the Nigerian commanders to pursue, they did nothing with the information,” citing Africa Command officials.

Besides that it was also alleged in the report, that when US General, Maj. Gen. James B. Linder, the head of American Special Operations forces in Africa, visited Nigeria in late October, “he was barred from visiting the base where American trainers were instructing the new Nigerian Army battalion created to help fight Boko Haram.”

Providing details, the New York Times report said: “General Linder was left waiting at the gate in what some American officials viewed as another dig at the Pentagon.” But the report added that US Africa Command officials insisted that this particular case was a “coordination issue that was remedied with a meeting later in the day.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *