By Desire Emmanuel with Agency Reports
The United States 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, American and Nigerian officials told Reuters on Saturday.
MQ-9 drones, which are sometimes known as Reaper drones and can be at high altitude for more than 27 hours, can be used for both intelligence gathering and airstrikes.
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 US deployment, which follows its airstrikes targeting militants in northwest Nigeria in late 2025, shows that Washington is getting back involved in tackling Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are spreading across West Africa.
The US military previously had a $100 million drone base in neighbouring Niger Republic 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.
Meanwhile, militants have stepped up their attacks in the northwest, near the border with Benin and Niger Republics, where a long-running banditry crisis risks mutating into another operating zone for Islamists.
A US 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 United States was operating assets from Bauchi airfield in the northeast.
“This support builds on the newly established US-Nigeria intelligence fusion cell, which continues to deliver actionable intelligence to our field commanders,” he told Reuters. “Our US partners remain in a strictly non-combat role, enabling operations led by Nigerian authorities,” he added.
Uba said the timeline for the American deployment in Nigeria would be determined in agreement by both sides.
Neither Uba nor the US official would comment on specific cases where American intelligence had led to the Nigerians targeting militants, but Uba said that US forces were helping Nigeria “identify, track and respond to terrorist threats.”
