By Saminu Ibrahim
The Nigerian government has been urged to increase funding for the Army in it’s efforts to tackle insurgency, banditry, kidnapping in the country.
The chairman Senate Committee on Army, Senator Ali Ndume made the call on Wednesday during the 2021 budget defence of the Nigerian Army in Abuja.
Ndume bemoaned that inspite of N13trillion federal government budget for 2021, a paltry sum of less than N30billion was appropriated for the Nigerian Army, saying the amount is grossly inadequate.
“I want to use this opportunity to tell you that the committee’s position is that government should increase the budget of the Nigerian Army and not only that, we are advocating that they should be front loaded”.
This comes as the committee observed that Bandits terrorising the nation parade better arms than the Nigerian Army.
Specifically, Ndume said “some of the Bandits have better AK47, I think they have what they call AK49, the latest, is use by the Bandits and the insurgents in the North East and North West”.
Acccording to the lawamaker, “no matter how you train somebody if he does not have what it takes to do it, then there is nothing virtually he can do”.
“The whole of Nigeria Army budget is 1.3billion dollars, that is at the level of Niger, Chad and Sudan and other poor countries. You can see that at the period of war, where the country is planning to spend 13 trillion, the government is budgeting less than N30billion as capital for the Nigeria Army.
“And there is no guarantee that this money will be release 100 percent to them”.
He explained that the committee reviewed the 2020 budget of the Army, saying “what they have there even for their personnel, that is those that are operating on ground and as I said before, the Nigerian Army because of the perculiar security challenges we are facing in this country, recently are engaged in 32 to 33 states. Yet only 83 percent of their personnel and overhead appropriation was released to them”.
He added: “You can imagine people that are in the war front, people that are trying to protect this country, people that are addressing the serious security challenges, got only 83 percent and most of their capital, what I mean the money that is supposed to be given to them to buy the necessary equipments buy arms and ammunition, procur certain kits for the armed forces, only 60 percent of that money was released to them.
“In fact on top of that is that 50 percent was released in July”.
Continuing: “For now what I see as a difference between the Nigerian Army and the Bandits is that, Army is trained and they have uniform, but even that the Bandits, some of them take away the uniform from the Nigerian Army, but they go to the market and buy Nigeria Army uniform.
Speaking on the supply of funds to terrorists from the UAE “we are grateful to government of UAE, for doing what they did and we are on the same page, and we are still calling on the Nigerian government to accelerate the prosecution of those involved directly or indirectly in Boko Haram activities, they should be brought to book and used as an example to deter others”.
