United States Clears Delivery of Alpha Jets to Nigerian Air Force for Boko Haram Fight

The United States cleared the transfer of a small number of used Alpha Jet light attack and trainer aircraft to the Nigerian Air Force in the first half of 2015, adding to the fixed-wing capability the military could bring to bear against Boko Haram in Nigeria's northeast. The twin-seat jets, originally developed jointly by France's Dassault and Germany's Dornier, arrived from American stocks in batches over the following years, with the first pair delivered in March and May of 2015.

The move came as the insurgency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states was near its peak, with Nigerian forces relying heavily on air support to strike militant camps and convoys across terrain that ground troops often struggled to reach. The Alpha Jet had already served in the Nigerian Air Force inventory for decades by that point, tracing back to acquisitions in the 1980s, but the fleet needed reinforcement as operational tempo increased.

A Narrow Channel of Support

Nigeria's relationship with Washington over military hardware had been strained for much of the preceding years by U.S. concerns over the Nigerian military's human rights record in the counter-insurgency campaign, which had left larger requests for lethal equipment in limbo. The Alpha Jet transfer, arriving in a year that also saw the Nigerian Air Force lose a Dornier aircraft in a fatal crash at Kaduna, represented one of the narrower channels through which military aviation support continued to flow even as bigger-ticket requests stayed unresolved.