[DW] The US-made aircraft were formally sold under the Trump administration in 2017. Nigeria wants the 12 attack planes to battle an Islamist insurgency; Nigeria's air force said on Friday that it has received six US attack aircraft as part of the country's drive to crack down on jihadist krazed killers.
"The batch of A-29 Super Tucanos aircraft have arrived in Kano today," air force front man Edward Gabkwet said.
The Nigerian government signed the deal to buy a total of 12 of the Brazilian-developed planes manufactured in the US in August 2017 under the Trump administration.
The propeller-driven planes, which have reconnaissance, surveillance and attack capabilities, were built in Florida by Brazil’s Embraer and the private US firm, the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
That pact also includes the supply of ammunition, training and aircraft maintenance believed to be worth more than $500 million.
The contract had been set to go through in May 2016 but the then-president, Barack Obama
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
, froze the deal after the Nigerian army accidentally bombed a camp for displaced people, killing 112 civilians.
WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING IN NIGERIA?
An insurgency led by Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...and rival offshoot Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
West Africa Province has killed at least 40,000 people and displaced more than two million.
Fighting has also spread to parts of neighboring Chad, Cameroon
...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there...
and Niger, forcing the nations to form a regional military coalition to fight the jihadists.
Nigeria is increasingly reliant on aircraft for operations above areas where its ground troops do not dare tread. On Sunday, the air force confirmed that it lost an Alpha Jet after criminal gangs fired at it in Zamfara state in the northwest of the country. Nigeria's top general died in a plane crash in bad weather in May.
Brazil already uses the Super Tucano for border patrols, while the armies of Afghanistan, Colombia and Indonesia are also customers.
The US Air Force described the A-29 aircraft as a "game-changer" when they were deployed in Afghanistan in 2016.
They can be armed with two wing-mounted machine guns and can carry up to 1,550 kg of weapons.