FG spends fresh N14bn on military equipment

In response to the rising spate of insecurity, the Federal Government has spent an additional N14bn on various military equipment between September and October 2024, Saturday PUNCH has learnt.

In the first seven months of this year, the government had spent N63.6bn to procure equipment and ammunition for the military and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

Checks by our correspondent using GovSpend, a civic tech platform that tracks and analyses Federal Government’s spending, showed that on April 16, 2024, the government, through the Ministry of Defence, paid N990m to a company named Equipment and Protective Applications International Limited for the procurement of ammunition.

Similarly, on April 22, 2024, the ministry paid N941m to the same company for “the procurement of light tactical armoured vehicles, heavy anti-mine armoured vehicles, and ammunition for the Armed Forces of Nigeria.”

The defence ministry also paid N3.2bn for “the procurement of bullet-resistant guard booths with surveillance capacity and proximity detectors for the Armed Forces of Nigeria,” on July 2, 2024.

The ministry also deployed the sum of N33bn in five tranches on July 26, 2024, through its naira transit account for the purchase of critical and urgent operational equipment for the military.

A payment of N3bn was also made on July 27, 2024, by the Defence Headquarters for “critical and urgent operational support to procure operational requirements (balance of 50 per cent of the 2023 supplementary appropriation).”

The government also made a payment of N22bn to ONSA as a special intervention for the procurement of essential equipment on July 31, 2024.

Further checks on the GovSpend tracking platform, however, showed that between September and October, a total sum of N14bn was doled out by the defence headquarters for various military equipment.

On September 13, the defence ministry doled out N4bn for “Procurement of critical combat equipment for Nigerian armed forces.”

Similarly, on October 9, the Nigerian Air Force made payments in two tranches for the purchase of defence equipment. The first was N5.2bn, while the second was N1.2bn.

On October 23, another N4bn was released by the Ministry of Defence for the same purposes, indicating that the government had spent a total sum of N77.6bn on arms purchases in the first 10 months of 2024.

An analysis of the yearly budgets of the Defence Ministry and eight other armed forces shows that the government spent N231.27bn on the procurement of arms and ammunition for security agencies and officers between 2020 and 2023.

According to the analysis, the government allotted N11.72bn in 2020, N10.78bn in 2021, N9.64bn in 2022, N47.02bn and a supplementary budget of N184.25bn in 2023, making a total of N231.27bn.

Our correspondent gathered that the government also spent the sum of N115bn on the importation of arms and ammunition during the same period.

Justifying the huge arms procurement budgets, the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, while appearing before the House of Representatives alongside other security chiefs in 2023, said ammunition expenditure should not be seen as huge because it is in dollars, as Nigeria does not manufacture military hardware.