The United States has deployed 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, US and Nigerian officials told Reuters.
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The troops, who are going to be operating assets from the airfield in Bauchi State, are not integrated with Nigerian units on the frontline.
The drones are to collect intelligence and not carry out airstrikes, Reuters quoted officials from the two countries as saying.
A former Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai (rtd), last Thursday stated that while the military had made progress and was not overwhelmed, it continued to face operational challenges, including limited manpower and equipment relative to the vast terrain of the North-east.
“I don’t see that the insurgency is overwhelming the troops. We are okay, but we need more enablers such as drones and additional platforms. The landmass is enormous, and troops are widely dispersed,” Buratai reportedly said.
However, the US deployment, which follows US airstrikes targeting militants in the North-west in late 2025, shows the US getting involved in tackling Islamic State- and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are spreading across West Africa.
Reuters reported that 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.
An assault by suicide bombers on a North-eastern Nigerian garrison town last week showed how a 17-year insurgency there can still strike urban centres.
Meanwhile, bandits have stepped up their attacks in the North-west, near the border with Benin Republic and Niger, where a long-running banditry crisis risks mutating into another operating zone for Islamists.
A US defence official was quoted as saying that the drones had been deployed alongside troops at the request of Nigeria to collect intelligence.
“We see this as a shared security threat,” the official said.
The Director of Defence Information at Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Major General Samaila Uba, confirmed that the US was operating assets from the airfield in Bauchi State.
“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.”
Uba said both sides would agree on the timeline for the US deployment in Nigeria.
MQ-9 drones, sometimes known as Reaper drones, can loiter at high altitude for more than 27 hours and are used for both intelligence gathering and airstrikes.
Neither Uba nor the US official would comment on specific cases where US intelligence had led to Nigerians targeting militants. Still, Uba said that US 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 US military over Nigeria.
The US, which has had a long partnership with Nigeria’s military, providing training and selling weapons, said it carried out airstrikes in the North-west 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.
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