Nigeria must carry out a comprehensive assessment of its military capabilities to identify defence gaps before purchasing more weapons, a retired senior air force officer has said. Retired Air Vice Marshal Sayo Olatunde warned that acquiring sophisticated hardware alone would not resolve the country’s security challenges without a broader overhaul of its defence strategy, policing, and foreign partnerships.
Speaking on Arise TV’s This Week programme, the former Chief of Defence Policy and Plans said effective operations required addressing supporting systems alongside hardware.”When you buy aircraft, you must also take care of other aspects of defence capability,” Air Vice Marshal Olatunde said. His comments followed the arrival of a United States Air Force C-17 transport aircraft delivering military equipment to the Nigerian Air Force. Air Vice Marshal Olatunde clarified that the shipment was not fresh US aid, but part of ongoing sustainment support for Nigeria’s A-29 Super Tucano fleet, originally procured through the US Foreign Military Sales programme in 2018 and delivered in 2021.
Capability gaps and local production
The former commandant of the Nigerian Air Force War College urged political and military leaders to base future procurements on lessons learned from combat operations and assessments of emerging threats. He warned that purchasing equipment without first pinpointing specific operational needs risked wasting resources for limited operational gain. A proper audit, he argued, must evaluate military doctrine, training, leadership, personnel, facilities, and system interoperability. Air Vice Marshal Olatunde also highlighted the need to build a self-reliant domestic defence industry. He noted that the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) had made progress by signing joint venture agreements and memoranda of understanding with local and international contractors to expand domestic manufacturing.
Overstretched military and police reform
Beyond procurement, the retired officer cautioned that the Nigerian military was being overstretched by its prolonged deployment in internal security operations, roles traditionally handled by the police. Rather than focusing solely on ongoing debates over creating state-level police forces, he urged authorities to prioritize reforming the existing national police structure to improve professionalism, accountability, and operational output. He also called for a strategic review of Nigeria’s military alliances with foreign powers, insisting that external aid must align directly with immediate national security priorities.”If you want to help us, that help must be precise and it must be timely,” he said. Air Vice Marshal Olatunde, author of Beyond the Symptoms, identified five core drivers sustaining insecurity in the country: corruption, porous borders and ungoverned spaces, socio-political polarisation, an underperforming police force, and a defective defence architecture.
He urged policymakers to move away from short-term fixes and adopt a long-term approach combining military reform, strengthened policing, local defence manufacturing, and clearly defined international partnerships.
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