Posers Celebrate Buhari’s Security Victory

Stakeholders are horrified by the perceived discrepancy between the outcome and President Muhammadu Buhari’s $1 billion investment in the anti-terrorism campaign, and they maintain that the nation is not much safer now than it has ever been.

Although experts acknowledge that military weaponry is costly elsewhere in the globe, they are more worried about the outcomes of the government’s efforts than they are about the enormous expenditure.

Buhari disclosed that his government has spent $1 billion on arms since 2015 in order to conduct ongoing operations against militants. He said that via military operations, Nigeria was able to retake areas that Boko Haram had taken over.

“Boko Haram controlled almost two-thirds of Borno State, half of Yobe State, a few Local Council Areas in Adamawa State, and other North Eastern Nigerian states when I came into office in 2015. By spending over $1 billion to purchase physical and software weapons from the US and other friendly nations to conduct ongoing operations against insurgency since 2015, we have been able to reclaim vast areas of territory.

The President said on Tuesday at the African Conference for Peace in Nouakchott, Mauritania, “Our Armed Forces and those of our partners in the Multinational Joint Task Force (consisting of Chad, Niger, Cameroun, Benin Republic and Nigeria) continue to demonstrate great bravery while paying the ultimate price in securing our collective freedom.”

In recent years, military expenditure has skyrocketed as terrorist and insurgent assaults have increased. Defense, for instance, is consuming as much as 13.4% of all expenditure this year, or N2.98 trillion, leaving little for vital growth-promoting sectors like health and education.

The N1.4 trillion allocated for infrastructure is more than doubled by the defense budget, which is also almost double the N1.5 trillion allotted for the health sector.

Although experts have accepted the necessity to increase security to safeguard people and property, there are worries that this would just aggravate the situation by spreading the nation’s resources unevenly across important industries.

Dr. Austin Nweze, a resource management specialist at the Lagos Business School, said in an interview with The Guardian that the current state of security is a result of historical neglect of important economic sectors.