By AbdulRaheem Aodu
Kaduna
The Nigerian Army yesterday lamented inadequate resources to counter the rising spate of insecurity and insurgency in the country.
The army’s Chief of Accounts and Budget, Major-General Abdullahi Muraina, said this at the opening of the 2014 Training Week of the Nigerian Army Finance Corps for Warrant Officers/Senior Non-Commissioned Officers in Jaji, Kaduna.
He revealed that the army received N4.8 billion as budget, while it spent about N3 billion on kitting 20,000 soldiers on operation.
“Budgetary allocation for the military is inadequate to meet the contemporary security challenges and also cater for the welfare of the Nigerian Army,” he said.
“It is our appeal that government evolves other means of funding and supporting military operations other than the normal budgetary allocation. Such means include but not limited to strategic cooperation and liaison with other civil industries for the production of uniforms and other equipment.”
Muraina said there was the need to review the bureaucratic bottlenecks for the funding approvals for military operations to enable a speedy release of fund.
He added: “We are not oblivious of the constraint on revenue generation and the fact that government has so many other responsibilities, but we are appealing to the government to review the current template of funding of the military, considering the current security challenges.
“The army budget for this year is just N4.8 billion.
Now, to provide only one item for the troops engaged in the operation in the North-east, assuming we committed 20,000 troops, the jacket and the helmet is in the average of about $1,000 (N150, 000); if you now have about 20,000 troops, this means they are going to spend about $20 million (N3 billion). That is just one item; we are not talking about uniforms, we are not talking about boots, and we are not talking about structure where they will stay: we are not talking about training.”
He said the Training Week’s theme, “Managing the Core Finance Operation of the Nigerian Army Efficiently and Effectively: The Roles of Nigerian Army Finance Corps for Warrant Officers/Senior Non-Commissioned Officers,” was carefully selected considering the corps’ role of providing financial management support to the army during the period of security challenges.
Declaring the training open, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah, said the increasing wave of socio-political and ethno-religious crises threatening the nation’s security lately had left serious demands on the army’s resources.
