A repeat of what happened in Afghanistan won’t happen in Nigeria, the United States has expressed assurance.
THE PUNCH reported that the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Leonard, gave the assurance in Abuja on Monday, during a meeting with journalists.
Leonard said that Nigeria and Afghanistan’s situations were not the same.
Afghanistan is currently enmeshed in crisis with the Taliban’s take over of the country.
Some stakeholders in Nigeria had warned President Muhammadu Buhari against a repeat of what happened in Afghanistan.
They expressed the fear that the situation in Afghanistan may serve as a morale booster for Boko Haram in Nigeria to take over the country.
However, the ambassador, who noted that Nigeria had a strong bilateral relationship with the US, said that the situations were different.
While allaying the fear that the US partnership with Nigeria might end up like that of Afghanistan, she said that “I hear people making the analogy with Afghanistan a lot; it does not match up.
“When you listen to what President Biden said on how troops went to Afghanistan in the first place, it was because they were in a horrible tragedy, over 3,000 Americans were killed.
“That is a different construct. The sovereign nations have had strong bilateral relations; I don’t actually think the two match up.”
