By ERIC SCHMITT DECEMBER 31, 2014 STUTTGART, Germany

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.
Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the top general for American missions in Africa, rushed from his headquarters here to help the commanders in the crisis.

Seven months later, the drone flights have dwindled, many of the advisers have gone home and not one of the kidnapped girls has been found. Many are believed to have been married off to Boko Haram fighters, who in the past six months have seized hundreds more
civilians, including children, planted bombs in Nigerian cities and captured entire towns.


In Washington, that fleeting moment of cooperation between Nigeria and the United States in May has now devolved into finger-
pointing and stoked the distrust between the two countries’ militaries. Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States has accused the Obama administration of failing to support the fight against Boko Haram, prompting the State
Department to fire back with condemnations of the Nigerian military’s dismal human rights
record. “Tensions in the U.S.-Nigeria relationship are probably at their highest level in the past decade,” Carson, the State Department’s former top diplomat for Africa, said in an interview. “There is a high degree of frustration on both sides. But this frustration should not be allowed to spin out of control.”

Here in Stuttgart, officials at the headquarters of United States Africa Command offered their own bleak assessment of a corruption-plagued, poorly equipped Nigerian military that is “in tatters” as it confronts an enemy that now controls about 20 percent of the country.

“Ounce for ounce, Boko Haram is equal to if not better than the Nigerian military,” said one American official here, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational reports.

The violence is in the meantime spilling into neighboring countries like Cameroon, which carried out its first airstrikes against Boko Haram this week, after militants overran a
military base and attacked five villages there. Despite Boko Haram’s advances, United States
Embassy officials in Abuja said Nigeria had canceled the last stage of American training of a newly created Nigerian Army battalion.

The United States has flown several hundred surveillance drone flights over the vast, densely forested regions in the northeast where the girls were seized, but officials in Stuttgart said that with few tips to guide the missions, the flights yielded little information, while diverting drones from other missions in war zones like Iraq and Syria.

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, Africa Command officials said.

In addition, United States security assistance to Nigeria has been sharply limited by American legal prohibitions against close dealings with foreign militaries that have engaged in human rights abuses.

Those restrictions have drawn sharp criticism from Nigerian officials. In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in
November, Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States, Adebowale Ibidapo Adefuye, said his government was dissatisfied with the “scope, nature and content” of American support in the fight against Boko Haram. He also disputed allegations of human rights violations committed by Nigerian soldiers.

“We find it difficult to understand how and why in spite of the U.S. presence in Nigeria with their
sophisticated military technology, Boko Haram should be expanding and becoming more deadly,” he said.

Mr. Adefuye accused Washington of failing to provide the lethal weapons needed to defeat Boko Haram. In June, the Pentagon gave Nigeria
some Toyota trucks, communications equipment and body armor. “There is no use giving us the type of support that enables us to deliver light jabs to the terrorists when what we need to give them is the killer punch,” the ambassador said.


Mr. Adefuye’s speech prompted a strong response from the State Department the next day. “We continue to urge Nigeria to investigate allegations of abuses perpetrated by Nigerian security forces, as well as offer Nigeria assistance in developing the doctrine and training needed to improve the military’s effectiveness,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in Washington. “We wouldn’t be raising that concern if we didn’t feel and others didn’t feel that they were warranted.”

Groups like Human Rights Watch say the Nigerian military has at times burned hundreds of homes and committed other abuses as it
battled Boko Haram and its presumed supporters.

By this time, cooperation on the ground was also wearing thin. When 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. General Linder was left waiting at the gate in what some American officials viewed as another dig at the Pentagon. Africa Command officials insisted it was a “coordination issue that was remedied with a meeting later in the day.

“We continue to engage with Nigeria on a broad range of training, equipping, and information-sharing projects across all of the military services,” Benjamin Benson, an Africa Command spokesman, said in an email.

Secretary of State John Kerry called Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, on Tuesday in part to discuss Boko Haram.

The strains between the two militaries are not new, and with Nigeria preparing for national
elections in February, American officials fear that earlier assessments may overtake their cautious optimism from the spring.

Testifying before House and Senate hearings, administration officials in May offered an unusually candid criticism of the Nigerian military. “We’re now looking at a military
force that’s, quite frankly, becoming afraid to even engage,” said Alice Friend, the Pentagon’s principal director for African affairs at the
time.

Sarah Sewall, the undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, said at a separate hearing that despite Nigeria’s $5.8 billion 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.”


Source: mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/world/with-schoolgirls-still-missing-fragile-us-nigeria-ties-falter.html

You should at least credit beegeagle for this post .

Jona u see wetin u cause? U arm dem!

Can you imagine

Corruption is still not our problem.

Boosting the moral of BokoHaram with this kind of statement by the US doesn't show that the US are really behind Nigerian government in conquerring this deadly sect. We shall surely put these americans nto shame someday with the help of God.

We know na....even shekau is a better leader than jonathan since he can convince ordinary civilian to kill than jonathan to NA

TOO BAD

no be only ounce for ounce

mumune!
boko haram is better than your father!

did we not all see boko haram attack a shot and wounded Nigerian army soldier?
what happen?
the gallant soldier stood up and stabbed the virgin hunter to hell!
ounce for ounce koo!
you think it is the fake WWA you people organise with undertaker?

these people can lie!!!
they have been infected by apc lyingiasis!

Bloody yanks spilling thrash ,you all will watch Nigeria become great ,and like Dogs US shall be forced to hide their tails behind .

Ounce for ounce, Taliban is equal to US Army

The violence is in the meantime spilling into neighboring countries like Cameroon, which carried out its first airstrikes against Boko Haram this week, after militants overran a military base and attacked five villages there

About 1,000 militants attacked five villages, including Amchide, and seized the nearby Achigachia military base, where they raised their black flag, army spokesman Lt Col Didier Badjeck told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

He said President Paul Biya then personally ordered the air force to intervene, forcing the militants out

I thought BokoHaram were allowed to take refuge in Cameroon until they started taking cities like they are "trying to do in Nigeria".

This is just another article meant to blackmail and malign our Military, yet they (US military) couldn't make any minute difference than bundle of excuses

lekkie073:
Ounce for ounce, Taliban is equal to US Army

them pass them sef!

lekkie073:
Ounce for ounce, Taliban is equal to US Army

100% accurate.

Ounce for ounce the Taliban is equal to the US military.

13 failed miserable years in Afghanistan. The cowards have shamelessly left Afghanistan, the Country in utter destruction, the Enemy still dug in and established.

People jus dey troway lie lie comment

Isn't it funny that Nigerians read an article written by a foreigner who probably has never set foot on Nigeria, to serve western interest, in their gullibility rush to pen comments that display their total lack of inquisitive depth.
For some whatever comes from the west is gospel truth. Have you guys care at all to compare the rhetoric from the west on Nigeria and other places? CNN coverage of news from here and elsewhere?

Recently hundreds of school children where gunned down in Pakistan. Have you heard any western media or government official pointing a finger at the Pakistani president?
Have you even seen the Pakistani people calling for their president's head.
The difference is that Nigerians in good number can hardly engage in sound thinking, if at all they understand the issues, to make right judgements.

how do 20 villages/town captured by BH in Borno and Yobe now equate to 20percent of Nigeria?
This is sort of an ignoble exaggeration.

bloody fools ,this is a joke from america

Nigerdeltaboi:
Bloody yanks spilling thrash ,you all will watch Nigeria become great ,and like Dogs US shall be forced to hide their tails behind .

seconded ..bloody two timing back-stabbers that just finished ruining and running away from Afghanistan...I thought they were very good how come the taliban is still strong after 13 years of american folly there...to hell with their smelly assessments..

tinkinjow:
Isn't it funny that Nigerians read an article written by a foreigner who probably has never set foot on Nigeria, to serve western interest, in their gullibility rush to pen comments that display their total lack of inquisitive depth.
For some whatever comes from the west is gospel truth. Have you guys care at all to compare the rhetoric from the west on Nigeria and other places? CNN coverage of news from here and elsewhere?

Recently hundreds of school children where gunned down in Pakistan. Have you heard any western media or government official pointing a finger at the Pakistani president?
Have you even seen the Pakistani people calling for their president's head.
The difference is that Nigerians in good number can hardly engage in sound thinking, if at all they understand the issues, to make right judgements.

Golden Post overall! And this: The difference is that Nigerians in good number can hardly engage in sound thinking is simply "righteous" most Nigerians only see things through the shades of PDP and APC.

Was that why they keep blocking our efforts to equip the military?

America! They will plan the night operation for the thief and send message to the police to be vigilant. Just to prove to either parties of their super-intel.

Nigeria shoud be begging America not blaming America.

omowolewa:
Was that why they keep blocking our efforts to equip the military?

she awon nor kobayin ni.

useless report that claims bokoharam controls 20% of nigerian territory.

Fash20:
she awon nor kobayin ni.

(((Laugh)))
So on point, anyway. But they ought to join us on this international fight against terrorism. The fight against terrorism knows no boundary I think.

omowolewa:


(((Laugh)))
So on point, anyway. But they ought to join us on this international fight against terrorism. The fight against terrorism knows no boundary I think.

yeah but the way we nigerians blame them(america) make me angry. Loll

ok, we aff heared... next pls!!

tinkinjow:
Isn't it funny that Nigerians read an article written by a foreigner who probably has never set foot on Nigeria, to serve western interest, in their gullibility rush to pen comments that display their total lack of inquisitive depth.
For some whatever comes from the west is gospel truth. Have you guys care at all to compare the rhetoric from the west on Nigeria and other places? CNN coverage of news from here and elsewhere?

Recently hundreds of school children where gunned down in Pakistan. Have you heard any western media or government official pointing a finger at the Pakistani president?
Have you even seen the Pakistani people calling for their president's head.
The difference is that Nigerians in good number can hardly engage in sound thinking, if at all they understand the issues, to make right judgements.

They're not all Nigerians. For instance, on this topic, some seem blind to Nigeria's side because they're Americans, especially of the Bevvies and Butt-head variety often found on Supremacists, guns and Gaming Websites and those types often found posting ignorantly on the Opinions section below CNN news. If you've ever widely visited online forums, you'd soon recognize the signature of different nationalities. And there are the usual South African, Ghana, Cameroonian dudes apparently emitted by Nigerians -goodness knows why - often participate in many Niraland threads and will always be anti Nigeria.

Soldiers sentenced to death for mutiny. Soldiers being sacked from the army in secret trials, and yet no one wants to ask what is happening with the military forces? Not one Chibok girl located and recovered by the army and the majority of a state occupied the insurgents, with two state capitals under threat, and yet, guys will say all is well with the army? Bombings in multiple locations almost at will, and yet we don't ask what our many security services are doing to secure the citizens?
Well done, this is how to progress, by not asking questions when things don't seem to be going right.

fydence:
seconded ..bloody two timing back-stabbers that just finished ruining and running away from Afghanistan...I thought they were very good how come the taliban is still strong after 13 years of american folly there...to hell with their smelly assessments..

yes o

American trash

God who gave us victory over Ebola will give us victory over US intention

They ve started another round of sabotage because BH is on the back foot, USA should leave us alone please.