Nigeria Doesn't Need Mercenaries Or Foreign Boots To Fight Terrorists; We Just Need Modern Equipment — Defence Chief, Musa

The Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Christopher Musa, has told the President Bola Tinubu-led government to provide the military with modern equipment and weapons to fight the growing insurgency in the country.

Musa said this on Friday during an interview on Arise News Channel, while ruling out the need for mercenaries to support the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) in the fight against criminal groups in the country.

He revealed that the Nigerian military had started assembling its own Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC).

He also pointed out that Nigeria was stabilising the West Africa sub-region and the Sahel, as it had always done.

The CDS said, “We don’t need mercenary fighters, we don’t need any foreign boot on our soil and that was why it was not even being thought out. We don’t have a foreign military base in Nigeria. We have the capacity to wage the war, we are training together.

“All we need is to get the equipment that we are fighting with. The ongoing war has also helped us to build the capacity to also produce our own armaments.

“I just came in from Jaji this morning, we are now producing and assembling our own armoured personnel carrier (APC), before we start full production.

“We believe that if we are able to get these things right, we would be able to do the right thing. We don’t need external help. Remember that we stabilised Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other west African nations, so we can still do same thing here”.

Musa stated that the Armed Forces of Nigeria had become a beacon of hope for Nigerians and that the military would continue to promote democracy in the country.

Musa stated that no military officers in Nigeria were interested in a coup, and that the country was working hard to restore democracy in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

“We are better in a democratic setting, so we want to sustain it,” he said.

Musa noted that the military was rising to the occasion, stressing that though the nation’s armed forces are trained in conventional warfare, they have adjusted to the asymmetric nature of insurgency tactics.

“We are used to fighting countries, but now we have to deal with enemy within and that becomes very difficult because the enemy understands that we are subjected to human rights and other international legal instruments governing armed conflict,” he said.