Reps want 100,000 soldiers recruited to defeat Boko Haram

By Kemi Yesufu

The House of Representatives on Tuesday stated the need for the Federal Government to recruit an additional 100 thousand soldiers into the Nigerian army.

Lawmakers further advised that retired officers and men who are still fit should be recalled into the reserve in order to help the army solve the shortfall recorded in the number of soldiers fighting Boko Haram.

The call from House to the Federal Government followed the adoption of a report presented it by the Rep. Abdulrazak Namdas-led Committee on Army, on its investigation into a recent attack by Boko Haram on Auno Village, Borno State.

Members also approved the recommendation that police be posted to Auno Village to protect the locals.

Namdas who laid the report during Tuesday’s plenary said the army had put it’s best to defeat and curtail the forays made by the insurgents, but it can still achieve desired results if it had adequate number of boots on ground.

Part of the recommendations in the report presented read: “That the Federal Government should, as a matter of national emergency, empower the Nigerian Army to recruit additional one hundred thousand (100,000) soldiers to make up for the shortfall in manpower–the same way it did during the civil war.
“We believe this can be achieved, given the huge number of unemployed youths that are available and ready to enlist into the Army.
“ The training ground for such number of recruits should be increased and fully equipped with necessary training facilities, in addition to what we have at Zaria Depot, which is currently the only place where recruits in Nigeria are trained”.

This is as the committee recommended that, “the Nigerian Army should recall retired officers and men and keep them on reserve for use as and when needed, in line with the Armed Forces Act (Part VII Section 25), provided they are physically fit and not above 50 years of age.
“That in as much as the Nigerian Army has tried to justify the rationale behind the creation of Super Camps, the committee believes that a lack of adequate manpower is partly responsible for their establishment.
“This is because the Army does not have enough personnel to hold ground for a long time after defeating Boko Haram in some villages hence it resorts to collapsing the thinly held and sparsely resourced troops’ locations to form Super Camps. With a massive recruitment of new soldiers, there would be no need for Super Camps”.

The House also passed the committee’s recommendation that the, Federal Government  respond to the Boko Haram crisis and other related security challenges more vigorously than the way it has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is as they argued that the number of Nigerians killed by insurgents and bandits is obviously far higher than the number of people killed by Covid–19. T