President Bola Tinubu has approved the recruitment of 28,000 additional soldiers and 50,000 police officers as part of efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s security architecture and tackle insecurity across the country.
The approval forms part of the administration’s proposed Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan, designed to improve military effectiveness, expand operational capacity and strengthen the country’s response to terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other criminal activities.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council disclosed this in a press statement issued on Sunday by its spokesperson, Dele Alake.
According to the statement, the President’s decision to increase military manpower is aimed at strengthening the presence of troops on the ground and enhancing operational effectiveness.
“To further the manpower expansion drive, President Tinubu also approved recruiting an additional 28,000 soldiers to strengthen the military’s presence on the ground and enhance its operational effectiveness,” the statement said.
It added that the President had also approved the recruitment of 50,000 additional police officers “as part of broader efforts to reinforce internal security, improve policing capacity, and strengthen the country’s response to criminal activities.”
The campaign council further disclosed that Tinubu had created four new Army divisions and restructured existing military formations to expand operational coverage and improve responses to security threats.
It said the administration had also approved the establishment of two additional Army depots in Osogbo, Osun State, and Amasiri-Edda, Ebonyi State, to increase military training capacity and accelerate the recruitment of soldiers.
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“Each depot can accommodate 6,000 recruits at a time, bringing their combined training capacity to 12,000 soldiers,” the statement noted.
It added that 5,210 recruits were already undergoing training at the Osogbo facility.
The statement also highlighted the administration’s investment in military accommodation and operational infrastructure, including a 700-unit military barracks project in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
On the fight against insurgency, the APC Presidential Campaign Council claimed that military operations across the country had resulted in the elimination of more than 15,000 Boko Haram terrorists and bandits in the last three years.
It also claimed that over 130,000 Boko Haram fighters and their dependents had surrendered through Operation Safe Corridor, the Federal Government’s rehabilitation programme for repentant insurgents.
The council said the proposed Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan would provide a long-term framework for aligning defence priorities, operational requirements, capability development and expenditure with Nigeria’s security challenges.
“The initiative is a major component of President Tinubu’s determination to reposition the nation’s security architecture toward a more coordinated, intelligence-led, technology-enabled, and prevention-oriented system capable of addressing terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, and other forms of criminality,” the statement said.
The council maintained that the combination of sustained military operations, improved manpower, modern technology and non-kinetic interventions would strengthen the country’s capacity to address insecurity.
