Osinbajo: Nigeria must produce more arms to be steps ahead of bandits, terrorists

Nigeria’s current security challenges and emerging threats require the country’s military and other relevant stakeholders to be several steps ahead of perpetrators while also stepping up local production of armaments.

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said this during a virtual interaction after receiving a presentation on “Defence Transformation and National Security: Strategic Options for Nigeria of the Future”, by the National Defence College Course 30 participants, on Wednesday.

“There needs to be more accountability because every time you hear about ‘we not having enough equipment,’ but there must be accountability. I will like to see a framework for greater accountability within the Ministry of Defence that ensures that they are able to account for military expenditure,” he said in a statement issued Thursday by his spokesman, Laolu Akande.

“If you look at the challenges that we are facing and the nature of those challenges, it is evident that we need to be many steps ahead of non-state actors in particular who are perpetrators of this asymmetric warfare that we are experiencing.”

Osinbajo, while commending the course participants for their efforts in proposing innovations in the defence sector, stressed the urgency of the local production of arms.

“If we say the local companies should produce some of the mobile platforms like Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) and Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle (MRAV), if we give them the contracts, they will produce, but if we choose to import rather than produce locally then we will never develop our military-industrial complex.”

Earlier in a presentation on behalf of the Course 30 participants, Col. A. A. Adamu proposed, among other things, the restructuring of the Ministry of Defence to reflect contemporary challenges as well as contain emerging threats to defence and security.