Immediate past Chief of Defence staff, Alex Badeh has continued to lambast the Federal Government on the neglect of the Nigerian Military. He claims the Nigerian troops were provided with inferior weapons to combat the Boko Haram sect.
Chief of Defence staff, Alex Badeh
The immediate past Chief of Defence staff, Alex Badeh has resorted to bitter complaints about the poor state of the Nigerian military. He revealed in an interview with Channels Television that the Nigerian Army were only furnished with new equipment in the year 2006 which has made them outdated. He also lamented that the army flies the oldest fight jet in the world leading to inneficiency. Listeners have frowned at his actions which is coming after his exit from the office.
Badeh said:
"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 North-East."
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