Nigeria is continuing its push to acquire more equipment to tackle insecurity but its reported human rights record is underlining this push.

Influential U.S. lawmakers are masterminding a hold on a proposed sale of attack helicopters to Nigeria over concerns that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was “drifting towards authoritarianism.”

This comes at a time Nigeria is besieged by multiple security challenges, including a 12-year insurgency by Boko Haram militants in the country’s northeast, deadly spate of high-profile kidnapping-for-ransom campaigns and bandit attacks that observers said has morphed into full-scale insurgency, as well as separatists agitations in the south-east and south-west.

Usman Umar reports.