Amid the drastic, sweeping cuts to United States foreign aid under the Trump administration, the UN Mine Action Service operation in Nigeria appears to be an anomaly — no stop-work order was issued and it even had its funding renewed in March.
“All of us are surprised,” said Edwin Faigmane, chief of the UNMAS program in Nigeria. “I still don’t know the reason we didn’t get a stop work order, and I’m really happy we didn’t. Other UN programs in Nigeria received those.”
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) first funded UNMAS in Nigeria in 2024, providing 20 percent of contributions. Other money came from Denmark, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, Germany and the European Commission. The UN’s Nigeria mine action program has an annual budget of about $3.5 million.
This year, under the Trump administration, USAID made $450,000 available for UNMAS in Nigeria, Faigmane told PassBlue in a call. “We received already 98 percent of that money. I’m really happy, I can’t explain it, I’m not complaining. It’s completely different from other programs, I would say.”
Another $350,000 from USAID could be in the pipeline for Faigmane’s team. The agency has asked UNMAS to submit a cost-extension proposal for this amount, which it is reviewing. “Fingers crossed we get it,” Faigmane said.
USAID cut all support for UNMAS in Mali this year, forcing the operation to end in the Sahelian country, and it recalled funds it had provided for UNMAS in Sudan through a trust fund managed by the UN Development Program, Cecile Van Manen, special assistant to the director of UNMAS, said.
“UNMAS Mali was funded entirely by USAID. UNMAS received a stop-work order for the USAID contribution, and as no other donors expressed interest, the programme closed,” she said in an email.
“Fortunately, thanks to generous contributions by other donors, UNMAS was able to prevent the closure of its Sudan programme and ensure it continues to provide life-saving support for Sudanese civilians and humanitarians,” Van Manen added.
She said the US State Department, through its Global Peace Operations Initiative, was still funding the UNMAS improvised explosive device (IED) threat-mitigation advisory team in New York City at UN headquarters.
Faigmane said USAID began funding his program last year, after UNMAS made the case that IEDs and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the country’s northeast, where jihadist insurgents broadly grouped under the Boko Haram umbrella have been fighting for 16 years, endangered farmers. Faigmane is based in Maiduguri in Borno state, the epicenter of the conflict.
“USAID had been supporting farming projects, and when you send farmers out there, are they aware of the danger?” he said. “They sat up and realized there’s going to be a problem if something happens to their other projects, and that’s why they started funding risk education.”
Risk education is the key focus of Faigmane’s program, and he said the USAID funding was particularly welcome now because the use of IEDs was rising. At the same time, the Nigerian government had begun closing its camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and sending the refugees back to their original communities in the conflict zone.
The IDP return policy began in 2023, and the following year there were 418 civilian casualties, Faigmane said. “This is a concerning number because this is the highest number since 2018,” the year UNMAS began operations in Nigeria. Nearly 90 percent of the casualties occurred in 12 of the 15 districts to which IDPs are being returned. “So essentially, the government is sending them back to areas that were not assessed properly for explosive ordnance.”
Boko Haram activity, mainly in Borno state, has resurged this year, with the most aggressive faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), carrying out raids on several military bases since January.
Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based senior researcher for the Good Governance Africa (GGA) think tank, said of ISWAP: “These guys are still very much planting IEDs. They have the expertise and capacity to carry out attacks in any part of Borno state. IEDs are a key part of their operations.”
Samuel said that IED blasts that resulted in death or injury happened on “almost on a weekly basis,” often in farmlands. “These IEDs are buried in places you don’t expect. The latest one happened at a bus stop.”
Boko Haram’s fight began as a campaign against Western education and ideology, but the movement fractured in 2016, giving rise to the more militant and organized ISWAP.
The Islamic State-aligned faction has focused its attacks on civilians, especially farmers returning to previously abandoned lands. The broader northern Nigeria region has faced chronic insecurity, economic marginalization and governance problems, all of which have made it a fertile ground for extremist recruitment and violence.
According to the independent organization Mine Action Review, a 2018 assessment found that Borno was one of the most heavily mine-contaminated regions in sub-Saharan Africa. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced since the insurgency began.
Faigmane said his program, with money from Japan, was supporting the police to establish mine-action teams and boost their ability “to dispose of any IEDs that communities find, anything that will go ‘bang’ or ‘boom.’”
“The police have some capacity but not enough,” he said. “By December, if things go well, then there will be 24 police certified in terms of international mine action standards.”
Samuel from Good Governance Africa said no systematic mine clearance, as in such former war zones as Angola or Cambodia, was happening in the northeast.
“Sometimes, the military use equipment when they are moving to check for mines for their own safety, but it’s not demining. If you demine an area, these guys [Boko Haram] come back, it would be an exercise in futility. The conflict has not ended.”
The nongovernmental organizations HALO Trust and Mine Action Group are present in Nigeria, but they too are focused on risk education and do no mine clearance.
Faigmane said the government did not want NGOs training local civilians in working with explosives. “It doesn’t want the number of people who know how to make bombs increase, because of the security context, that’s what they claim. It’s a complex dilemma,” he said. “The security situation says, ‘Don’t deploy anybody who knows how to get rid of an IED because this guy can easily train another person who will make bombs.’”
Because no surveys have been done, it is impossible to assess the scale of the IED threats, Faigmane said. “We know that there are no anti-personnel mines being used in theater; there are UXO underground, or IEDs. It’s not like Cambodia, where you have minefields. We can’t define it right now.”
The dismantling of USAID and the huge slashing of US foreign assistance have hit programs around the world, from food aid to HIV prevention and support for vulnerable women and girls.
“We’re very concerned about the broader financial pressures facing the humanitarian sector,” Aurélie Lachant, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said.
“Needs are growing rapidly: there are now more than 120 armed conflicts around the world, compared to just 20 a couple of decades ago. And with more conflicts come more explosive hazards such as landmines, UXOs, IEDs, which are having a real impact on civilians,” Lachant said in an email.
“To give a sense of the urgency: in 2024, casualties from weapon contamination rose by 22%, with civilians making up the majority of victims,” she added. “Clearance is becoming more difficult due to shifting frontlines and insecurity, as well as the funding shortages affecting clearance organisations. At the same time, the demand for support services, such as physical rehabilitation, mental health care, and reintegration for survivors, is outpacing available resources.”
Lachant noted that risk awareness and safe-behavior programs were becoming even more essential. “Sustained support is absolutely critical if we’re going to keep responding effectively and protecting communities caught in conflict.”
Van Malen of UNMAS said that last year, Denmark was the biggest contributor to the agency, providing $9.5 million, with the US second on $4,819,834. UNMAS operates in 19 countries.
She said there had been no explanation from the Trump administration as to why funding had ended for Mali and Sudan but continued for Nigeria.
A US State Department spokesperson said in an email to PassBlue: “The US is conducting a review of its participation in and funding for all international organizations – including the UN – to ensure that they align with U.S. interests.”
Asked why funding had been cut for UNMAS in Mali and Sudan but not Nigeria, the spokesperson said: “Ensuring we have the right mix of programs to support US national security and other core national interests of the US requires an agile approach. We will continue to make changes as needed.”
One possibility for the continued support for Nigeria could reflect the confusion and flip-flops that have marked US policy on many matters, including foreign wars and tariffs, since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.
Said Faigmane: “I hope they don’t realise ‘we made a mistake’ [and say] ‘Oops, give us back the money’. We can’t do that because we’ve already spent the money!”
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Anton Ferreira worked for 23 years as a correspondent and desk editor at Reuters. He started in Hong Kong and later worked long-term assignments in the Mideast, Latin America, New York City, Washington and South Africa. Ferreira is now based in South Africa.
