The Nigerian military has rejected claims by a senior United States official that American forces seized a large cache of electronic materials from terrorists in Nigeria and flew them out of the country.
Director of Defence Information, Brigadier General Samalia Uba, said the electronic materials were not recovered by US forces during an operation. Instead, he said they contained declassified intelligence from previous counter-terrorism operations carried out by the Nigerian Armed Forces and were voluntarily handed over to the United States.
According to Uba, the materials were shared as part of ongoing counter-terrorism cooperation between Nigeria and the US.
"The materials were given to the US," he said, adding that the transfer was in line with the longstanding security partnership between both countries.
He stressed that the intelligence was released by the Nigerian government under an existing security collaboration and should not be interpreted as evidence that American forces independently recovered the materials from terrorists in Nigeria.
The clarification is the Nigerian military's first official response since the claims were made by the United States.
The controversy followed comments by Sebastian Gorka, the US Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Gorka claimed that American forces recovered a large volume of electronic materials during an operation in Nigeria.
He also said US operators killed 199 jihadists during the mission and described the intelligence haul as the largest volume of enemy electronic intelligence recovered since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"I watched our operators kill 199 jihadis in one operation and seize an unprecedented volume of intelligence materials," Gorka said.
Responding to the remarks, Uba maintained that the intelligence exchange was part of an established security arrangement between both countries and not the result of a new US operation in Nigeria.
"It is not a new operation. We have previously communicated our highly successful joint operations in May. Nigeria-US joint operations and collaboration are very much on course," he said.
