The last time weapons were bought for the Nigerian army was in 2006 - Alex Badeh

Immediate past Chief of Defence staff, Alex Badeh
is not done talking about the lack of equipment in
the Nigerian army. In an interview with Channels
TV, Alex Badeh said the last time the Nigerian
army received new equipment was in 2006 and
that the Nigerian military flies the oldest fighter
jets in the whole world. He's now saying all this
after he was removed as Chief of Defence Staff. I
see!
"We found out that we had fifth columnist
in the military that were leaking information
to terrorist and then we also had
challenges of serviceable equipment. If I go
down memory lane, I think the last time any
piece of equipment was bought for the
Nigerian army was in 2006 and how many
were they? They were few. In fact they
were few and if we go way back to 1993,
from then on, soldiers were not allowed to
even go to range to go and practice. So a
soldier that is not practicing how to use his
gun, what kind of military are you going to
have? So those were the challenges we had
so when we were faced with Boko Haram, it
became a very big challenge. We have been
trying to increase the military by ourselves.
You don't give me budget and say go and
build barracks. Barracks is capital
intensive. So even if we recruit so many
people in the military now, we don't have
where to house them. So it is a challenge
too that government must face.
Government must build barracks for us so
that we can recruit more. For a population
of over 170 million, what we have in Nigeria
can not be adequate enough to protect us
So those were the challenges we had.
Inadequate equipment, obsolete equipment.
In fact we are the ones that are flying the
oldest fighter aeroplanes in the whole
world. Alpha jets we bought them in 1981.
That is the backbone of our operations in
the Northeast" he said