NIGERIA ECONOMY FACT FILE.

Population : 200 million

GDP Norminal : $567 Billion

GDP (PPP) : $1.07 trillion.

Oil Production : 2.3 million bpd

Proven Oil Reserve : 39 Billion barrels

Value of Reserve in 2016 USD : $4.6 trillion

NIGERIA MILITARY FACT FILE

Active Duty : 200,000

Reserve Personnel : 32,000

Paramilitary : 180,000

DEFENCE BUDGET + EXTRA BUDGETARY SECURITY ALLOCATION 2013-2018

$26 BILLION.

An increase in defence spending is not a bad thing. Threats from Boko Haram is expected to drive Nigeria’s focus on defense spending. In order to counter these threats, the country is expected to invest in surveillance and intelligence gathering systems, which are expected to be covered under defense spending.

As a result, Nigeria’s homeland security budget has been increasing exponentially to almost 14% from around US$1.7 Billion in 2013 to close to US$4 Billion by 2015. DEFENCE spending fell to $1.7 Billion in 2016 about $2.3 Billion 2018. These does not include the now time-honoured tradition of an extra budgetary allocation of $1 Billion to buy munitions. Yes $1 billion set aside annually for munitions to prosecute the war.

In a nutshell Nigeria is easily among Africa’s Top 5 defence spenders. But it doesn’t end there. Should Nigeria be averse to depleting its dollar reserve the country is among a hand few that can finance its arms purchases with commodities. To understand this concept let’s look at Indonesia.

In August 2017 Indonesia bought 11 Sukhoi fighter jets worth $1.14 billion from Russia in exchange for cash and Indonesian commodities. Unwilling to deplete its Forex reserve, the Southeast Asian country pledged to ship up to $570 million worth of commodities in addition to cash to pay for the Suhkoi SU-35 fighter jets. China and Russia have been willing to accept commodities as payment.

In other words, Nigeria is better suited than %90 of African countries to finance huge arms procurement. It’s Africa’s first trillion-dollar economy. It had Africa’s largest Foreign Reserve until it was pushed over to number 2 by Algeria. It’s the worlds 6th largest exporter of crude. Perhaps most importantly, the security imperatives are there. There is simply no excuse whatsoever not to adequately fund the armed forces.

And YES Nigeria has pumped in billions of dollars in recent years, but it hasn’t translate into major new equipment procurement orders and capital investment in the military. In 2014 the All Progressives Congress (APC) put the total amount spent by the country’s security apparatus at $32.88 billion. THIRTY TWO BILLION DOLLARs

A major watershed is the decade long bitter war of attrition which has revealed severe deficiencies in Nigeria’s military organization and technology. As recently as 2003 the Nigerian military lived up to its billing as the preponderant military power in West Africa. It’s military crackdown basically forced Niger Delta insurgents to the table.

In 2003 Liberian rebels took control of a key bridge in the capital, Monrovia, before being beaten back by government troops. Nigeria, already preoccupied with Niger Delta hoped this was just a fad, When it became clear it wasn’t and as fighting raged on with hundreds killed in a week, Nigeria deployed 1,300 troops to Liberia.

At the same time when rebels overthrew the government in Guinea-Bissau, the Nigerian Minister of Defence, Bello Mohammed pledged the military’s zero-tolerance to the forceful takeover of government in any part of the region. Again Nigeria deployed troops to Guinea Bissau as part of its commitment to restoring constitutional order in that country.

Such was the capability of the Nigerian Army. It was the most feared army in the region. It’s worthy to note that at this time Nigeria was spending less than a billion dollars on defence. Between $700-800 million. It took less 7 years for that capability to erode.

The Boko Haram insurgency demystified the Nigerian military. Since the insurgency began 35,000 Nigerians have been killed. Thousands of soldiers KIA. For the first time in Nigeria’s entire existence, a hostile actor basically created a mini-State with its own territory. Boko Haram controlled about 20,000 square miles of territory within Nigerian territory an area the size of Belguim, encompassing 17 Local Government areas and 2 million Nigerians.

The Nigerian army, crippled by corruption and incompetence, has shown itself unable to resist the jihadist advance. Despite all this, the Nigerian government does not place a high priority on improving the quality its military hardware and on rebuilding Nigeria’s military capacity that has been so heavily depleted after a decade of war.

Nigeria has in the last 15 years been engaged in armed conflict in the Niger Delta, Liberia and with Boko Haram, and continues to regard the now vastly militarily superior Francophone alliance as a serious threat to Nigeria’s security.

In 2014 the federal government allocated 20 per cent of its budget to the armed forces – over $5 billion. The biggest defence allocation ever. Yet precious little trickled down to the soldiers in the frontline, who remain poorly armed and equipped. Instead, a large proportion of the military budget simply disappeared into the pockets of senior officers. The over $36 billion spent on security allocation since the war began have basically being plundered.

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Corruption inhibits a core state goal of strengthening Nigeria’s military. Several recent cases have involved the misuse of state assets by officials to embezzle funds, or to sell off assets cheaply to the mutual benefit of the buyer and the seller.

The biggest and most well-publicized corruption scandal in the Ministry of Defense in recent years was the one that involved Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan.

When President Buhari assumed office he set up an investigative panel through the Office of the National Security Adviser to probe arms procurement between 2007 and 2015. It was gathered that part of the panel’s discovery was that the total amount involved in arms fraud was $15bn. FIFTEEN BILLION DOLLARS. The $15bn arms funds were diverted by top military officers. The presidential panel set up by President Muhammadu Buhari through the Office of the National Security Adviser to probe arms procurement between 2007 and 2015.

The financial muscle of Nigeria is unmatched. It out classes that of Egypt and South Africa, yet the Nigerian military looks more like that of a militia than a modern army. The government still views massive investing in the armed forces at the bottom level in priority. Those who suffer the consequence of this madness are not the politicians who live in gated estates with personal security. Rather they are the troops at the frontlines who bears the brunt of the incompetence of the Nigerian government.

Just two days ago rampaging Boko Haram insurgents overran a Nigerian Army battalion in Borno State, killing the unit’s commander and 70 soldiers. A soldier, who managed to escape the attack alongside other injured troops, said at least 70 soldiers died in the attack. He said the corpses of the slain Nigerian soldiers are yet to be evacuated, days after Boko Haram took advantage of their lack of munitions, and dealt them a devastating defeat.

It was also gathered that large cache of arms, ammunition, and military equipment were carted away by Boko Haram fighters during the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Guzamala Local Government Area, at about 6:00 p.m.

In this gut wrenching incident the few soldiers were lucky to have escaped the onslaught said that there were efforts being made to evacuate corpses of the fallen soldiers on Tuesday morning. According to soldiers who survived the attack, the move to evacuate the littering corpses was thwarted by Boko Haram fighters who held their ground and forced the soldiers to abandon the mission

https://defensenigeria.blog/2018/11/23/nigeria-shame-of-a-military-but-why/

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