Air Force chief, Badeh under attack over Boko Haram response

The IISS said that despite refit and repair programmes in recent years, much of Nigeria’s defence equipment is “unfit to be deployed for prolonged periods of time”.

Procurement has not focused on counter-insurgency while analysts blame widespread graft and management failures for the lack of improvement, despite the increases in defence spending.

Some reports have said less than $100 million of the nearly $2 billion defence budget actually gets to deployed troops.

Ryan Cummings, chief Africa analyst with Red24 risk consultants, said the fact that members of Nigeria’s “anti-Boko Haram” unit — the 7th infantry division — had refused to deploy was telling.

It showed “just how poorly the insurgency is being addressed from a military perspective”, he said.

– Demoralising effect –

Virginia Comolli, a West Africa security and extremism specialist at the IISS, said she was unsurprised that the military was demoralised and struggling to defeat Boko Haram.

The better equipped rebels were gaining confidence and beginning to fight more like a conventional army, “intimidating (and possibly) overwhelming… the soldiers battling them”, she added.

Rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention and torture, have meanwhile eroded civilian trust in the military, losing them a vital intelligence asset.

On Friday, the military indicated that it recognised the seriousness of the situation, calling the insurgency a threat to national sovereignty that needed to be reversed.

Cummings suggested, however, that regional support was now more important than ever, given the frequent cross-border raids from camps outside the country.

Without regional help, “it is likely that Boko Haram will continue to expand its operational presence across Nigeria’s northeast and possibly into neighbouring countries”, he said.