The White House has been at pains to stress that personnel would not take part in combat operations and would be armed only for self-defense.
Nigeria greeted that announcement as a “welcome development.”
President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May vowing to end the violence that has killed scores and spooked much-needed international investors.
But US efforts to give him military assistance have been hampered by concerns about human rights abuses carried out by the country’s military.
And until now Washington has largely shied away from engaging its vast military assets to combat Boko Haram, with policymakers wary of fueling militant recruitment or fusing the group’s ties with Middle Eastern Islamists.
The US moves come as Boko Haram steadily expands operations beyond its traditional base in the Northeast, conducting attacks in Cameroon and Chad that have killed dozens.
An uptick in violence is expected in the coming weeks with the end of the rainy season and amid growing resistance to a nascent multi-national joint task force bringing together countries in the region to fight Boko Haram.
On Thursday and Friday, suicide bombers from the terror sect slew dozens of people in attacks on Maiduguri ,Borno State. The insurgency has claimed at least 17,000 lives since 2009.
Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which all have borders with Nigeria in the Lake Chad region, have formed a military alliance with Nigeria and the Republic of Benin to battle the extremists, who this year declared allegiance to the Islamic State.
Nigeria’s neighbours have each been hit by bombers, often women or adolescent girls, who detonate their devices in crowded places such as open markets. Bans on concealing clothes, searches and close scrutiny have prevented some attacks, but others come without warning.
National intelligence services are historically best known for monitoring the activities of the domestic opposition, rather than tackling threats from the likes of Boko Haram, whose violence has uprooted about 2.5 million people.
Heads of state in the Lake Chad region have several times pleaded for international assistance to the multinational task force created this year to take the war to the enemy.
France already provides some forms of intelligence. Paris has deployed a strong military presence on the ground, including Operation Barkhane, with its headquarters in the Chadian capital N’Djamena, set up to fight jihadists in the Sahel.
Last year, Washington provided Nigeria with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance expertise in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram from their school.
Analysts have seen alleged military abuses such as arbitrary detention of Boko Haram suspects in both Nigeria and Cameroon as having hit their ability to gather on-the-ground intelligence from civilians.
The US military is also active in Niger, where it uses drones to watch over the broad strip of Sahel territory on the southern side of the Sahara. The pilotless aircraft will now also be monitoring Boko Haram.
The first 90 men out of 300 US soldiers arrived on Monday in Cameroon, where they will be stationed at the northern town of Garoua, which is already a base for the Cameroonian air force to fly sorties to bomb Boko Haram infiltrators.
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