It has been revealed that as many as 15 Armoured Personnel Carriers and tanks purchased for the Nigerian Army in 2020 under the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai (retd.), from the $1 billion fund approved by the Nigerian government were lost to the Boko Haram terrorists within the same year they were bought.
SaharaReporters learnt that when the funds which were allotted to the army came, Buratai deployed part of it to obtain the APCs from the four countries – although the arms ended up being stolen or destroyed by the Boko Haram terrorists the same year due to Buratai’s poor battle judgment and politicisation of the army under his watch. On Wednesday, the breakdown of the 21 APCs ordered between 2018 and 2020 showed that, “Nigeria ordered six VT-4 and ZTL-09 armoured tanks from China in 2019 and the six were supplied in 2020. Nigeria ordered three Marauder APCs from South Africa in 2018 and the three were supplied in 2019. Nigeria ordered five KLTV-181 armoured carriers from South Korea in 2020 and the five came in 2020. “Finally, Nigeria ordered eight Phantom-2 armoured carriers from the United Arab Emirates in 2020 and the eight were supplied in 2020.”
