Chuks Okocha in Abuja
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURWA),has decried the fact that despite over N5 trillion spent on military hardware, terrorism, banditry and other crimes still persisted in the country.
The group, therefore, called on President Bola Tinubu to conduct a professional and non-partisan equipment audit of the defence institutions to ascertain the fundamental causes of the declining capacity of the military and police to combat terrorists, kidnappers, bandits and armed Fulani herders in the country in spite of massive investment
In a statement by the coordinator of the group, Emmanuel Onwubiko said, “There is definitely something inherently wrong with the procurement system within the defence sector that demands immediate, transparent and accountable financial forensic and equipment audits and thorough cleansing because it is only when there is in existence an tolerable criminal network within governmental system that a government can be said to have invested over N5 trillion in only the last quarter of the year 2023, and yet the rate of terrorist attacks and insecurity in Nigeria has become unbearably unprecedented. Nigerian state needs to weed out the internal saboteurs in the military and policing institutions.”
The group asked the federal government to put in place a general forensic audit of the military hardwares and softwares to ascertain whether what have been reported as successfully imported are exactly the same with what are evidently on ground.
Alternatively, the rights group suggested that there might as well be in existence, a formidable criminal gang members in the defence institutions that funnel some of the military hardwares to the terrorists, bandits and kidnappers because “from abundance of evidence, terrorism and kidnappings have seemingly become multi billion dollars franchises in Nigeria which must be dismantled for peace and stability to be achieved.”
Onwubiko, wondered why the country was in such a spectacular security mess that have attracted global opprobrium to the international image of Nigeria especially because of the twin incidents of mass abductions by terrorists in Borno and Kaduna and Sokoto States in the North East and North West of Nigeria even when officially, Nigeria’s imports expenditure on armoured vehicles, have significantly surpassed that on fuel in the final quarter of 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
HURIWA, which regretted the alleged large scale procurement corruption or diversion of these military hardwares to terrorists by some unscrupulous elements embedded within the Nigerian military institutions, said experts had concluded that the high expenditure on military weapons was a development that likely happened due to the worsening security situation in the country.
It said the heightened state of insecurity and the inability of the armed forces to subdue these forces of evil and negativity, did not show that as a nation, it has spent such a humongous amount of funds on military weapons in only a quarter.
HURIWA, which quoted the official report of the NBS stated: “The latest foreign trade report by the NBS noted that Nigeria spent over N5.06 trillion on the importation of armoured vehicles, dwarfing the N1.81 trillion spent on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol. This is a difference of N3.25 trillion in Q4 2023.”
