A position that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the establishment of a French military base in Nigeria has been refuted.
Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, the Acting Head of Crisis Monitoring & Public Communications at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissed the claim in a brief comment, stating that the report was “not true.”
His denial follows a claim published by an online news outlet, which suggested that France would establish a military base in Abuja under the pretext of setting up a language academy to train Nigerian military personnel in French.
Citing anonymous sources, the original report had claimed that President Tinubu had yielded to pressure from French President Emmanuel Macron during a recent visit to Paris. It further alleged that the project was being discreetly advanced to avoid scrutiny and possible resistance from Nigeria’s National Assembly due to its sensitive strategic and security implications.
The report also drew a connection to the launch of a French language laboratory at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna in January 2024.
The federal government had previously addressed similar concerns. In May 2024, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, categorically stated that Nigeria was not in discussions with any foreign power regarding the establishment of military bases. He urged the public to disregard such reports and reiterated the government’s focus on strengthening existing international security cooperation without compromising Nigeria’s sovereignty.
Likewise, the French Embassy in Nigeria had also denied involvement in any such military arrangements, aligning itself with Nigeria’s official position. These reaffirmations followed a letter reportedly sent by northern elders to President Tinubu and leaders of the National Assembly, warning against entering into defence agreements with the United States and France. The elders raised alarms about foreign lobbying to redeploy troops formerly stationed in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to Nigerian soil. They argued that such agreements could compromise Nigeria’s strategic autonomy and pointed to the failure of foreign military interventions in the Sahel to curb terrorism.
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