U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) raised alarms to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over the planned sale of weaponized aircraft to the Nigerian government.
The Senators cited multiple incidents in which the Nigerian military had flouted the laws of war, leading to concerns around how these additional weapons would be put to use. Booker is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy.
The Senators urged Tillerson to require the Nigerian government to demonstrate progress in investigating these incidents before completing the aircraft sale.
“We are concerned that the decision to proceed with this sale will empower the government to backtrack even further on its commitments to human rights, accountability, and upholding international humanitarian law, which in turn could spur greater unrest and violence, particularly in the northeastern part of the country,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Tillerson. “Instead we recommend you make clear to President Buhari that the sale of these aircraft can proceed only if there is positive and measurable progress on reforming the security institutions.”
In 2015, credible organizations found the General Officer in command of the Nigerian army to have launched an unjustified attack against a group of Shia Muslims, leading to a massacre of at least 347 Nigerians. Earlier this year, the Nigerian Air Force attacked a displaced persons camp, resulting in the death of at least 236 of Nigeria’s most vulnerable civilians; the government claims the attack was a mistake.
Senator Booker has been a leader in the Senate for promoting accountability abroad and upholding international human rights standards. Last month, he joined a group of a dozen Senators denouncing President Trump’s praise of Philippines’ dictator Rodrigo Duterte, whose government engages in a brutal campaign of extrajudicial murders. Earlier this year, he led a letter to Tillerson questioning the Secretary’s commitment to human rights after the State Department broke with precedent by not participating in the public release of the Department’s annual Human Rights Report.
