Nigerian Army Had No Equipment In My Time As CDS Says Badeh

The just sacked Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh has said that the Nigerian Armed Forces he led had no equipment.

The former Chief of Defence Staff made the statement on Thursday in Abuja while delivering a valedictory speech at a pulling out parade organised in his honour at the Mogadishu Cantonment.

In his words “Permit me to also add here that the nation’s militaries are equipped and trained in peace time for the conflicts they expect to confront in the future. Unfortunately, that has not been our experience as a nation.

“Over the years, the military was neglected and under-equipped to ensure the survival of certain regimes, while other regimes, based on advice from some foreign nations, deliberately reduced the size of the military and underfunded it.

“Unfortunately, our past leaders accepted such recommendations without appreciating our peculiarities as a third world military, which does not have the technological advantage that could serve as force multipliers and compensate for reduced strength.

He noted that the Nigerian military was overstretched in the face of the insurgency confronting the nation such that it embarked on emergency recruitment and training, which were not sufficiently enough to prepare soldiers for the kind of situation the country has found her self in.

He alleged said some past leaders intentionally decided to weaken the military just for the survival of their administration.

Bedeh said that some of the regimes accepted the demands of foreign countries to reduce the size of the military and deprived the nation’s defence forces of the requisite funding and size.

He lamented that such leaders accepted the advice of such foreign countries without considering the nation’s peculiar characteristics as a third world country which lacked the advantages of modern technology to compensate for the costly reduction in size and strength.

Badeh however urged the Federal Government to embark on a comprehensive review of the country's military structure with emphasis on its size, capacity and the equipment that should be at its disposal to car

ry out its responsibility of defending the country.