Why Nigeria Needs More Than a Bigger Army

Without accompanying reforms, the risk is that President Tinubu’s plan only makes Nigeria’s army bigger but not better.

Nigerian soldiers from the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) run while singing during training, at the MNJTF military base, Sector 3 Headquarters, in Monguno, Borno state, Nigeria, on 5 July 2025. File Photo: JORIS BOLOMEY/AFP via Getty Images.

By Matthew Page

In July, President Bola Tinubu announced a major expansion of the Nigerian Army, adding four new divisions to its existing eight. Rather than framing it as a long-planned response to Nigeria’s many worsening security challenges, Tinubu indicated that the announcement was a direct response to a mass school kidnapping in his home region, the latest in a series of such attacks. Regardless, the groundbreaking decision has the potential to make Nigeria more secure.

The expansion plan involves recruiting 28,000 soldiers and creating several new brigades and battalions in conflict-prone areas. Some of the troops will be trained at two new facilities built to expand the army’s recruitment capacity – and training has already begun. Tinubu also approved a huge pay increase (from 30 to 80 per cent, depending on rank) for military personnel, as real wages have dwindled due to high inflation.

While undoubtedly historic, Tinubu’s announcement begs some important questions. How tangible and transformative is this expansion, and how will it be paid for? Can the deployment of more soldiers translate into long-term security gains without fundamental security sector reform? And what opportunities does this expansion create for the Nigeria’s security assistance partners, such as the UK and the US?

Does size matter?

Before answering these questions, it should be said that this expansion is long overdue. Nigeria has a population of roughly 240 million and is set to overtake the US as the world’s third most populous country by 2043. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army only has approximately 100,000 active personnel according to recent estimates. Its vast and growing population requires a larger military. Nigeria also needs more military capacity to address its many complex security challenges – insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and communal conflict, for example – that have proliferated in recent years, destabilizing parts of the country that were once considered safe.

Stationing more soldiers outside of their traditional garrisons, especially in rural areas, would help protect vulnerable civilian targets and make it easier for the army to locate and eliminate remote safe havens used by bandit gangs and insurgent groups. Meanwhile, a greater military presence along Nigeria’s porous borders could improve operational coordination and intelligence sharing with army units in neighboring Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. This could help offset the decline in regional security cooperation that followed the 2025 withdrawal of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

That said, Tinubu’s expansion plan does not address many of the army’s institutional challenges; a list that includes lacklustre leadership, poor operational planning, inadequate training, equipment shortfalls, endemic corruption and a dire human rights record. This suggests that Nigeria’s reform-resistant army could experience a sort of ‘operational stagflation’: becoming bigger but not better.

Stagflation has already affected Nigeria’s defence budget, which – although appearing to have skyrocketed in recent years – has in fact grown only modestly in dollar terms, rising from $3.9 billion in 2021 to $4.7 billion in 2026. Moreover, the overall share of the national budget spent on defence actually decreased from 21 to 11 per cent during the same timeframe due to Nigeria’s rising debt burden and the steady devaluation of its currency, the naira. To pay for more soldiers and higher military salaries, President Tinubu will need to increase the defence budget, which may force cuts to infrastructure, health and education spending.

It also remains to be seen whether the creation of new divisions, brigades and battalions will increase the army’s operational capacity, or just make it even more top heavy. Already known for its woeful tooth-to-tail ratio – ‘teeth’ meaning the combat troops and ‘tail’ the support personnel – the Nigerian Army has far too many general officers for a force its size. According to one estimate, 30 per cent of all Nigerian military officers achieve general/flag officer rank, compared to no more than 3 per cent in many other countries. Until this dynamic changes, a disproportionate number of Nigerian soldiers will end up serving as orderlies, rather than patrolling communities to protect civilians.

How to ensure bigger also means better

Having taken the bold decision to increase the size of the country’s military, Nigeria’s leaders should look to maximize the impact of that investment by embracing key reforms. Tinubu could, for example, take steps to consolidate Nigeria’s sprawling security apparatus which now consists of an alphabet soup of security agencies that perform poorly and compete more than they cooperate. But in a country where politicians have long relied on agency-creation to build out their patronage networks, such bureaucratic streamlining will require sustained high-level impetus.

Security sector consolidation would also alleviate pressure on the army if it freed up human and budget resources for Nigeria’s struggling police. This investment will be especially critical as Nigeria prepares to pass a constitutional amendment to allow states to create their own police forces. If trained and resourced effectively, state forces could work with the federal police to relieve the army of routine internal security duties, freeing troops up to tackle some of Nigeria’s toughest security challenges.

Any domestic security sector reform effort, however modest, would also give Nigeria’s security assistance partners a clear opportunity to re-engage in ways that play to their strengths: planning and technical assistance, leadership training and education, and facilitating interagency cooperation and intelligence sharing. As partners like Britain and the US engage with Nigeria’s newly expanded army, they should stress to Nigeria’s leaders that security sector reform is the best way to ensure that bigger also means better.