By Omeiza Ajayi, ABUJA
Retired military chiefs have cautioned President Bola Tinubu to fully resource the Nigerian Army’s existing eight divisions before pressing ahead with the newly approved expansion to twelve, warning that personnel and equipment gaps in the current formations, an unrealistic implementation timeline, and inadequate funding could undermine the initiative.
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Former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Lucky Irabor; former Air Force spokesperson, Group Captain Sadiq Shehu (retd); and former Joint Task Force (JTF) commander, retired Major General Anthony Atolagbe, raised the concerns in separate television interviews monitored in Abuja.
They however commended the president’s decision to create four new divisions in Makurdi, Ilorin, Jalingo and Benin City, moving the Army’s force structure from eight to twelve.
Irabor described the move as “a right step in the right direction” but insisted the existing formations must first be brought up to standard. “Increasing from 8 Divisions to 12 Divisions has a lot of implications. First, the existing 8 Divisions must be properly brought up to scale in terms of personnel, equipment, logistics, and so on and so forth,” he said.
Shehu argued that the health of the current eight divisions had not been established before the decision to expand was taken. “What I had expected to be done, and I hope has been done, is to look at the existing eight divisions. How well resourced are they? Again, it is open knowledge that the military and even the ordinary citizens will be saying that the military is overstretched,” he said.
He cited standard military benchmarks, known as Table of Organisation and Equipment TOE, which specify personnel and equipment levels for battalions, brigades and divisions.
According to him, a battalion should typically have between 6,000 and 9,000 officers and men and requires roughly 750 rifles, dozens of vehicles and radios, along with communications and engineering equipment. “Unless you have this combination of organisation… and also equipment that is balanced, unless you have an appreciable number, your battalion, or your brigade, or your division is not going to function properly,” he said, adding that military scientists recommend units operate at 90 to 100 percent of TOE strength.
Shehu also questioned the timeline set for the rollout, under which the 5th, 9th and 10th divisions are to be established by September 2026, with the 83rd division following by December. “With due respect, very good plan, but the timeline, again, is not realistic. It is very easy by presidential fiat to say, I have established a division, but to be honest, to have a ready division, in fact, even a ready brigade or a battalion within three months or five months is barely impossible.”
He questioned how the announced recruitment of 28,000 additional personnel was expected to populate four new divisions, noting that a single division typically requires 15,000 to 20,000 officers and men, and warned that reassigning troops from existing units could dilute already under-strength formations. “If you have units that are already below TOE and you want to carry some of them and put them in new divisions, what you are doing? Again, you are diluting,” he said.
Citing what he described as National Assembly disclosures attributed to Senator Ali Ndume, Shehu said the Army received less than five percent of its budget for equipment this year. “A unit without equipment is… you need the people. You need specialists, engineers, signals officers. All these are necessary to make a battalion a battalion,” he said, adding that pay alone would not resolve motivation gaps. “Certainly, the soldiers have been underpaid. We’ve heard that from a ridiculous N40,000, it has moved to N100,000. What will N100,000 achieve?”
Shehu warned against treating the expansion as a political exercise disconnected from operational need. “Let’s not make it as if it is a politically kind of decision, that every area needs to have its division. That will not help the military. That will not help the country.”
Atolagbe, however, offered a more optimistic reading of the same timeline, describing the overall expansion as one of the most far-reaching reorganisations of the military in recent memory. “I think what we are witnessing is what I will call a rejig at its best,” he said, adding later, “this is audacious,” when asked if it ranked among the most radical reforms of the Army to date.
He explained that the new divisions were designed to close dangerous gaps in territorial coverage, particularly across the central belt of the country. “If you take the map of Nigeria based on what we used to have, you will notice that between the division that is in Sokoto and the one that is in Ilorin, there is a very big gap in terms of distance and space,” he said, warning that a fast-moving hostile force On the feasibility of the phased timeline, Atolagbe pushed back against suggestions that it was overly ambitious, noting that some proposed division headquarters, such as in Ilorin, already sit on existing barracks and battalions. “There’s what we call a task organisation now that will take place in such a way that if your battalion now is being taken over by another division, it means that they need to reallocate another battalion to you,” he said.
On personnel, he noted that training timelines vary by rank, with recruits requiring about six months of training and officers up to four years at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). “These are progressive steps that will be taken,” he said.
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