By David Lewis
LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. military has multiple MQ-9 drones operating in Nigeria alongside 200 troops to provide training and intelligence support to the military, which is fighting Islamist militants across the north, U.S. and Nigerian officials told Reuters.
The troops are not integrated within Nigerian units on the frontline and the drones are collecting intelligence and not carrying out airstrikes, officials from the two countries said.
However, the U.S. deployment, which follows U.S. airstrikes targeting militants in northwest Nigeria in late 2025, shows the U.S. getting back involved in tackling Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are spreading across West Africa.
The U.S. military previously had a $100 million drone base in neighbouring Niger with about 1,000 troops monitoring militants across the Sahel region, but that was closed in 2024 after the Niger junta requested their departure, part of a broader rejection of western military support by countries in the Sahel region.
An assault by suicide bombers on a northeastern Nigerian garrison town this week showed how a 17-year insurgency there can still strike urban centres.
Meanwhile, militants have stepped up their attacks in the northwest, near the border with Benin and Niger, where a long-running banditry crisis risks mutating into another operating zone for Islamists.
A U.S. defence official said the drones had been deployed alongside troops at the request of the Nigerians to collect intelligence. “We see this as a shared security threat,” the official said.
Major General Samaila Uba, director of defence information at Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters, confirmed that the U.S. was operating assets from Bauchi airfield in the northeast.
“This support builds on the newly established U.S.-Nigeria intelligence fusion cell, which continues to deliver actionable intelligence to our field commanders,” he told Reuters. “Our U.S. partners remain in a strictly non-combat role, enabling operations led by Nigerian authorities.”
‘IDENTIFY, TRACK AND RESPOND’
Uba said the timeline for the U.S. deployment in Nigeria would be determined in agreement by both sides.
MQ-9 drones, which are sometimes known as Reaper drones and can loiter at high altitude for more than 27 hours, can be used for both intelligence gathering and airstrikes.
Neither Uba nor the U.S. official would comment on specific cases where U.S. intelligence had led to the Nigerians targeting militants, but Uba said that U.S. forces were helping Nigeria “identify, track and respond to terrorist threats”.
Late last year, Reuters reported that aircraft based in Ghana had been conducting intelligence gathering flights for the U.S. military over Nigeria.
MILITANTS REMAIN A PERSISTENT THREAT
The United States – which has had a long partnership with Nigeria’s military, providing training and selling weapons – said it carried out airstrikes in the northwest on Christmas Day to stop the targeting of Christians in the region.
Nigeria’s government and experts on the conflict have rejected claims of a concerted anti-Christian campaign, saying it oversimplifies a complex crisis.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the March 16 attack on the garrison town.
Uba said it was still being investigated, adding that both Boko Haram militants and ISWAP, an Islamic State-allied faction, remain a persistent threat, adapting their tactics over time.
“We continue to assess that these organisations will seek opportunistic targets and may attempt to demonstrate relevance through high-visibility attacks,” he said.
(Reporting by David Lewis; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
