Summary: Signatory Nigeria has expressed its intent to ratify the convention, but has not taken any steps to do so besides holding stakeholder consultations. Nigeria has participated in many of the convention’s meetings, most recently in September 2016, and voted in favor of a key UN resolution on the convention in December 2016.

Nigeria is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but imported them and possesses a stockpile. In 2015 and 2016, Nigeria alleged that fighters from the armed non-state group Boko Haram have repurposed submunitions to use in improvised explosive devices.

Policy

The Federal Republic of Nigeria signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 June 2009.

In August 2016, government officials confirmed Nigeria’s intent to complete its ratification of the convention, but said the process had been slow due to a lack of prioritization.[1] In September 2016 the Cluster Munition Coalition raised the need for Nigeria’s ratification with a representative from Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense.[2]

Since 2010, Nigerian officials have committed to ratify the convention as soon as possible, but the ratification process had not advanced to the National Assembly as of June 2017.[3] During 2012, Nigeria undertook stakeholder consultations on ratification of the convention.[4]

Nigeria participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and joined in the consensus adoption of the convention text in Dublin in May 2008. It attended the signing conference in Oslo in December 2008 as an observer only and said it would sign after completing internal processes.[5] Nigeria subsequently signed the convention at the UN in New York in June 2009.

Nigeria has participated in every Meeting of States Parties of the convention, except in 2014. It attended the convention’s First Review Conference in 2015 and intersessional meetings in 2011–2012 and 2014. Nigeria has participated in regional workshops on the convention, most recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in August 2016 and in Kampala, Uganda, in May 2017.[6]

At the convention’s Sixth Meeting of States Parties in September 2016, Nigeria expressed its support for efforts to promote universalization of the convention.[7] In December 2016, Nigeria voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution that calls on states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to join “as soon as possible.”[8] It voted in favor of the first UNGA resolution on the convention in December 2015.[9]

In its capacity as a temporary member of the UN Security Council, Nigeria voted in favor of a May 2014 resolution expressing concern at the use of cluster munitions in South Sudan.[10]

Nigeria is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, and transfer

Nigeria is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but imported them in the past.

Sierra Leone has alleged that Nigerian peacekeepers participating in an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) monitoring mission used cluster munitions in Sierra Leone in 1997, but the mission’s Force Commander General Victor Malu denied the allegation at the time.[11] In May 2012, Sierra Leone reiterated the allegations of use.[12] Nigeria again denied the use in September 2012, calling the finding “wrong and incorrect.”[13]

Stockpiling

The status and composition of Nigeria’s stockpile of cluster munitions is not known, but in April 2012, a government official said Nigeria stockpiles United Kingdom (UK)-made BL755 cluster bombs.[14] In September 2012, Nigeria requested technical assistance and support from States Parties to destroy the BL755 cluster bombs.[15]

In October 2015, the headquarters of Nigeria’s armed forces (Defence Headquarters) issued an alert warning the public of the threat from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) made by Boko Haram from submunitions removed from cluster munitions.[16] The Ministry of Defence did not name the type of cluster munitions depicted in photographs of the weapons that it said Nigerian Army engineers in Adamawa State recovered from arms caches found in areas contested by Boko Haram, however CMC experts identified them as submunitions from French-made BLG-66 cluster munitions. Agence France-Presse reported that Boko Haram could have taken the cluster munitions from Nigerian ammunition stocks or received them from smugglers who obtained them from Libyan arms depots.[17]

Nigeria has not indicated if it will retain cluster munitions for research or training purposes.