Nigeria must recruit 100,000 additional soldiers to end the long-running insurgency by the Islamist Boko Haram group, the governor of a state at the epicenter of the violence said.
The militant group has inflicted “horrific and simultaneous attacks” in Borno state since March 2019, Governor Babagana Zulum said in a statement on Wednesday. “The military don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the equipment.”
President Muhammadu Buhari won an in election in 2015 with pledges that included ending the insurgency that’s estimated to have killed more than 30,000 people in 10 years. Initial efforts by his administration drove the militants away from towns and villages they occupied.
The Nigerian army is currently 200,000-strong, with troops deployed in at least 29 of the country’s 36 states to contain various levels of unrest.
“Moreover, Nigeria spends up to 50% of its public revenue on debt repayments, which means that there are few resources left for large-scale recruitment or improving military equipment,” Hindar said.
Apart from fighting Islamist insurgents in the northeast, the armed forces must also contend with other security threats throughout the country. These include armed banditry in the northwest, deadly clashes between farmers and herders in central Nigeria and armed groups disrupting the flow of oil in the coastal Niger River delta.
