By Jacob Kubeka –
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Nigeria, on Thursday, amid ongoing turmoil and human rights concerns that have prompted calls for a rethinking of the US relationship with Africa’s most populous country.
The senior US diplomat is on his first trip to Sub-Saharan Africa, where he hopes to promote President Joe Biden’s core themes of fostering democracy and combating climate change as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Blinken made his first trip in longtime ally Kenya on Wednesday, calling for African-led solutions to the continent’s challenges, particularly the escalating war in Ethiopia, where Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is leading mediation efforts.
With 20 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and its largest economy, Nigeria is critical for any continent-wide strategy and successive US administrations have courted Nigerian leaders since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999.
But US views of Nigeria, already marred by years of violence and rampant corruption, hardened last year after security forces unleashed deadly violence during massive protests against police brutality.
Biden, in an unusually forceful statement as a candidate, voiced solidarity with the protesters and urged President Muhammadu Buhari — whom Blinken will meet Thursday — to rein in security forces.
Senator Bob Menendez, a member of Biden’s Democratic Party who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at a hearing with Blinken called for a “fundamental rethink of the framework of our overall engagement” with Nigeria.
Congressional objections have held up the sale of 12 US Cobra attack helicopters to Nigeria amid calls to probe whether the military is doing enough to prevent civilian deaths as it battles the two-decade Boko Haram jihadist insurgency.
But Nigeria recently started receiving a separate shipment of Super Tocano warplanes after former president Donald Trump gave the green light to the sale that had been held up by the previous administration of Barack Obama following Nigeria’s accidental strike on a refugee camp that killed more than 100 people.
AFP