US AFRICOM Troops in Nigeria: Deepening Servitude to American Military Ambitions By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
*”To be an enemy of the U.S. is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”*
-Dr. Henry Kissinger.
In recent days, Nigerian media platforms have been filled with stories, pictures, and videos, of troops of the United States African Command (AFRICOM) on ground in Nigeria. A report on President Tinubu’s TVC television channel, outlined that the United States said it dispatched “a small team of troops” to Nigeria following recent security cooperation between the two countries. A General Anderson, in charge of AFRICOM, was quoted to have explained that the aim of the American deployment into Nigeria, is to strengthen “intelligence gathering”.
Obviously aware of the disquietude amongst observers of geopolitics in Nigeria, the Nigerian government was also reported to have “clarified reports surrounding” the American deployment. The Tinubu government assured that it was limited to “intelligence gathering and training as part of ongoing cooperation to combat terrorism and insurgency”. The TVC report added further that “the deployment is also aimed at deepening cooperation against growing terrorist threats in West Africa”.
Against the backdrop of the US AFRICOM deployment inside Nigeria, more details began to emerge on the extensive nature of the growing Nigerian military “partnership” with the Unites States. Reports filtering out indicate that the U.S has requested permission to establish a drone refueling station in Nigeria. Such a facility, if granted, is expected to support U.S. drones operating out of Accra, Ghana, from where America currently conducts Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) flights over large swathes of Nigerian territory.
Furthermore, while the specific platforms involved have not been officially disclosed, observers believe these are most likely to be the MQ-9 Reaper. These drones are powered by Honeywell TPE331-10 turboprop engines and typically run on JP-8 or similar kerosene based fuels.
Those conversant with these developments say that discussions are at an advanced stage, and it is very likely that a state in Nigeria’s North East will be designated as the host site for the American request. Defence and security observers add that the U.S had reportedly proposed Lagos or Abuja to host the station. But both were immediately ruled out.
This is because even the Tinubu government that is literally willing to break its own back to satisfy imperial interests, was worried about the political and security sensitivities of granting such a request. They have therefore selected the North East of the country because it already hosts Nigeria’s own drone operations and related infrastructure. It will also be far away from the prying eyes of critics.
If the approval is granted (and it seems a matter of when), such a “refueling station” would enable the U.S. to operate more effectively from Ghana, while flying into Nigeria to coordinate intelligence support and operational planning with Nigerian forces.
These are troubling developments indeed. When AFRICOM was first proposed around 2007, progressive intellectuals, civil society activists, patriotic politicians, and media commentators all over the African continent, built a consensus against the deployment of US military forces on the African continent. So hostile was the continent to an imperialist military command designed for Africa, that it was headquartered in the Kelley military base in Stuttgart, Germany.
Nigeria’s national sovereignty and defence capability have so frighteningly eroded, and we have elected into power, some of the most subservient and grovelling administrations to the Americans, that the US AFRICOM that Africa unanimously rejected at inception in 2007, is now comfortably deploying troops inside the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This is the same country that used to provide the leadership for African aspirations in the recent past.
Instructively, the American deployment in Nigeria, and the plan to open a drones “refuelling” facility came less than two years after the military administration in the neighbouring Republic of Niger expelled the United States from its territory. The United States military completed withdrawal from air base 201 in Niger, in 2024, after Niger ordered nearly 1,000 U.S. military personnel to leave following the 2023 coup.
The United States built the enormous drone base in Agadez, Niger, from which it conducted drone strikes and aerial surveillance across the Sahel. Air base 201, was built at a cost of $100 million, and allegedly, provided crucial intelligence about Islamist militant groups before the coup. But these actions were far more to advance US geopolitical interests than the security of Niger and its people. It was this realization that led to the closure of the drone base. So, what Niger rejected as an act of national sovereignty, is what Nigeria is about to accept, as a reflection of a loss of sovereign defence capability and an expression of abject, unpatriotic surrender.
The United States operates a vast global network, with estimates indicating roughly 750 to over 877 military base sites in at least 80 to 95 countries and territories. These installations range from major, permanent airbases to smaller, temporary, or, in some cases, undisclosed sites.
Relatedly, though smaller than its presence in the Middle East or Asia, the United States operates approximately 29 known “military facilities” across 15 to 20 African nations. While many of these “military facilities” are smaller, dispersed, or temporary “contingency locations,” the primary permanent base is Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
Besides the major base in Djibouti (home to thousands of personnel), the U.S. has established sites for surveillance and special operations in countries like Somalia, and Kenya, and until recently, Niger, focusing on counter-terrorism in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. These bases are primarily used for drone strikes, intelligence gathering, aerial refueling, and rapid response, rather than large-scale troop deployments.
Estimates range from 20 to over 30 facilities, including “enduring” bases and smaller, often unpublicized, forward operating locations. AFRICOM frequently relies on these locations to combat groups like Al-Shabaab and ISIS. The network of sites is designed to cover a vast geographical area, aimed at protecting U.S. interests and to supposedly support African partners against security threats. The “refuelling facility” being planned for Nigeria’s North East, will join the ever expanding US strategic foothold in Africa. It will also underscore the depth of Nigeria’s neo-colonial dependency.
There are key issues surrounding a potential U.S. military base in Nigeria. Stripped of subterfuge and official language, a “refuelling facility” run by American military personnel within Nigeria, is just another name for an American military base. It immediately speaks to issues of national sovereignty erosion, as well as reinforcing the dynamics of neocolonialism.
At the height of the Cold War rivalries in the 1960s, the Tafawa Balewa government had proposed a controversial Anglo-Nigeria Defence Pact. There was massive resistance in the country, led by the Nigerian trade union and students’ movement. The idea was dropped like hot iron, and the spectre of a neo-colonial military subordination to British Imperialism, was scuppered.
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The new arrangement with the United States is not better than what was rejected in the 1960s. It is even more demeaning to our dignity today, after sixty-six years of independence. The subservient posture to the United States in defence and strategic issues, does more damage to our traditions of independent foreign and defence policies, as well as leadership of the African continent, in geo-strategic matters.
We have previously seen the canvassing of the argument of “training” for Nigerian troops, as an excuse to tie Nigeria to the apron-string of the United States. Soon after coming to power in 1999, General Olusegun Obasanjo, entered an agreement with the United States Army. He claimed that the Americans were coming to teach “peace keeping”. The Nigerian military hierarchy, headed by General Victor Malu, then military chief of staff, rejected the overture.
They argued, correctly, that the United States has no record of “peace keeping” anywhere. It invades countries, often on dubious legal grounds. On the other hand, the Nigerian Army possessed a proud record of peace keeping operations around the world. It was, infact, the Nigerian Army that should teach the US Army, how to keep peace! From Korea, through to Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and many more countries, the United States Army has carried out aggressions that killed millions of people in these countries!
Another point to ponder is the ineffectiveness of bonds with an extra-continental power like the United States, in efforts to fight against terrorism. Clearly, it never works. The example of that fact comes from the neighbouring Republic of Niger. Despite the decade-long U.S. presence in Niger, terrorism continued to grow, thus questioning the efficacy of the military bases erected in the country, and outside of Niger’s national sovereignty. It never stopped nor curtailed the regional militant groups.
The unvarnished wisdom is to depend on our own national intellectual resources to study our problems as well as to devise our own solutions. Never depend on outsiders. Never depend on US Imperialism. The African peasants are smart indeed. They say that our soup can only be cooked inside our pot!
The economic factors of geopolitics must also be properly appreciated. Nigeria has some of the most important natural resources central to the contemporary international economic system. These include rare earth minerals like lithium and cobalt; we also have gold, and there’re incredible riches of oil and gas, all of which are currently in contention between the great powers of the world. The United States wants to keep Nigeria firmly within its orbit in the unfolding geopolitical struggle against other emergent powers. A military “cooperation” agreement, in real terms, holds us in bearhug, for the long-term economic interests of the United States.
A related issue is that while the United States remains the most powerful imperialist country the world has ever known, in truth, it is a declining power. The world is hurtling ever more steadily into a multipolar order. Newer forces are emerging in the world that we must not only take note of, but will serve us better, to partner. We need the wisdom to diversify our security cooperation in the light of the unfolding reality of the contemporary international situation. We cannot afford to put all our security eggs in one, imperial, basket.
China, for example, just like Nigeria, was colonised, and went through the “Century of Humiliation” by the Western imperialist powers and Japan. It was a period that lasted for approximately 110 years from 1839 to 1949. That long period of humiliation started from the First Opium Wars and ended with the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
But with its liberation in 1949, China chose an independent path of national development. Within a generation, China took over 800 million people out of poverty. It is a genuine record for all of humanity. China’s infrastructure today, are top class. It is also becoming a top leader in science and innovation. On the other hand, the United States deepens underdevelopment wherever it touches, or in countries that follow its diktat. The reason is simple. American economic and security doctrines are designed to defend its hegemony and protect the unjust international economic order that it profits handsomely from.
We have far more to learn from China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, etc.,. These countries were colonised like us, and through independent national action, they improved their national productive forces and are marching forward steadily against underdevelopment. Our ruling class grovels like slaves before the United States. They seem not to know that United States’ power, on the other hand, was built on the genocide of its aboriginal populations, the enslavement of millions of Africans, the exploitation of the labour power of working people, and the theft of resources of countries from all over the world!
The erosion of Nigeria’s national defence sovereignty and capacity is happening without a hint of general reservation or even patriotic analysis by the Nigerian trade union or students movement. The old tradition of critical engagement with policy has fallen off the cliff in our country. The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) used to take a militant, anti-imperialist posture. Not anymore. It has become an ineffective detachment of the Nigerian political elite, with a leadership culture that’s completely de-ideologised.
Similarly, many of those who could see through the entrails, are already lost into the wilderness of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that survive on foreign currency coming from imperialist institutions, most of these, from the United States.
Let us be clear in our minds. We must carefully interrogate any “cooperation agreement” with the United States in the fields of defence and security to ensure that they genuinely serve our national interest in the long run. The reason is simple. The US enters agreements only to serve its own interests. When the US bombed locations in Northern Nigeria on Christmas Day, in 2025, it did so against the backdrop of the assertion by the American President, Donald Trump, that Christians in Nigeria faced an “existential threat”.
Nigerians however know that terrorist attacks are not exactly as simplistic as had been posited, because people from all religious and ethnic backgrounds have suffered from the violence of different terror groups over the years. Unfortunately, the bombing and the motive canvassed by the American President, played into one of the many fault lines of Nigerian society that has been repeatedly exploited in the struggle for power, but which has become dangerously weaponized against the unity of the country itself.
The situation is further compounded by right-wing, political circles in the United States, who are increasingly and vociferously becoming invested in agendas to delegitimize our country. The United States has the record of looking out only for its own interests and using and dumping it’s satraps at its convenience. Therefore, a defence “cooperation agreement” with such a power, might actually become a point of embarkation on the road to perdition.
It will be in our most enlightened national interest to diversify our security, defence, and socioeconomic interests, with the old powers like the US and it’s Western allies and the emerging powers around the world. Let us endeavour at all times to remember the statement of Dr. Henry Kissinger: “To be an enemy of the U.S. is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”.
Abuja, Monday, February 9th, 2026.
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, FNGE, holds a PhD in Defence and Strategic Studies, from the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna.
