BIDEN FACES NIGERIA CRISIS

U.S. security assistance and America's complicity in the Nigerian government's human rights violations fuel insurgencies and boost public support for them. President Biden faces three simultaneous crises in his policy toward Nigeria in the aftermath of the elections on February 25, when 24 million Nigerians voted in national elections. Now, following the election of Bola Tinubu as president, they are all coming to a head.First, Washington's efforts to get the previous government of Muhammadu Buhari to end or reduce official corruption in Nigeria, to end or reduce state violence against civilians (especially women and children) and non-violent demonstrators, to contain or defeat jihadi insurgencies, and to reform the economy completely failed.Second, the government's conduct of the February election, the violence that occurred during the polling, and the associated currency crisis, only made the situation worse.Third, members of Congress are stepping up their efforts to block future U.S. arms deliveries to Nigeria.The February elections came during a continuing struggle to contain the insurgencies of Boko Hanim (which has affiliated with al-Qaeda) and the Islamic State in West Africa (which is a branch of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq). All three serious contenders represented different elements of Nigeria's notoriously corrupt political elite, and less than a third of the registered voter thought there was any actual point in going to the polls.