Roughly a month ago, Donald Trump spoke with the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa. \u00a0Of the two meetings, the one with Nigerian leader Muhammadu\u00a0Buhari is the more important, as it pertained to improving U.S. cooperation with Nigeria in combating terror in the region, specifically the Nigerian-based group Boko Haram. \u00a0The U.S. refused to sell weapons to Nigeria under the Obama administration due to reports of widespread human rights violations by the Nigerian military. \u00a0On the surface, the meeting between Trump and Buhari simply represents another instance of Trump ignoring history and\/or setting a potentially harmful precedent. \u00a0However, I believe it may be time to rethink our stance on Nigeria, and based on this meeting, that Trump may surprisingly be just the man for the job.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram is easily the most dangerous terrorist group in Africa and one of the most dangerous in the world. \u00a0Moreover, Buhari has already seen success against Boko Haram, most notably securing the release of some of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the group almost three years ago. \u00a0I think the U.S. needs to temporarily forget the past and do what must be done to aid Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram. Direct U.S. involvement probably won’t be popular or nearly as effective as leaving the situation to Nigeria and other African nations. \u00a0On the other hand, our weapons and equipment could give Nigeria the edge it needs to find victory against a group whose insurgency has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and displaced millions more. \u00a0We need only be cautious in what exactly we give to Nigeria to use in the fight, but ridding the world of terrorist groups like Boko Haram needs to be a long-term, consistent goal of the United States. \u00a0Unchecked terror is a problem for many, and an affront to the entire world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roughly a month ago, Donald Trump spoke with the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa. \u00a0Of the two meetings, the one with Nigerian leader Muhammadu\u00a0Buhari is the more important, as it pertained to improving U.S. cooperation with Nigeria in combating terror in the region, specifically the Nigerian-based group Boko Haram. \u00a0The U.S. refused to sell weapons to Nigeria under the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}