Ballooning budgets and the urgent need to restructure Nigeria’s security architecture, By Umar Yakubu

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…pouring endless funds into an unoptimised framework is not a long-term strategy. It has become critically urgent to fundamentally restructure our security apparatus. To achieve efficient outcomes and ensure our trillions are well-spent, Nigeria should implement several paradigm shifts.

Over the past decade, Nigeria’s budgetary allocation for defence and security has seen a massive upward trend, driven by relentless efforts to combat insurgency, banditry, and kidnapping. From ₦1.1 trillion in 2017, the security budget has ballooned, peaking at over ₦6 trillion in 2025, with a proposed ₦5.41 trillion for 2026.

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To put this in perspective: despite over ₦32 trillion sunk into defence and security over the last 15 years, our nation continues to grapple with debilitating security challenges. Citizens are increasingly raising alarms over the glaring disconnect between these astronomical budgetary inputs and actual security outcomes.

The proposed 2026 budget, which reserves a massive 9 per cent of the total national budget for security, highlights a troubling structural flaw. Out of the ₦5.41 trillion, the Ministry of Defence is expected to receive approximately ₦3.154 trillion. However, a staggering ₦2.39 trillion of that is consumed by personnel costs and allowances, leaving only ₦464 billion for capital projects. The Nigerian Army remains the highest-funded force, followed by the Police. While the stated priorities include modernisation and intelligence-driven policing, the sheer dominance of recurrent expenditure guarantees that we are largely funding an inefficient structure, rather than investing in modern, technology-enabled outcomes.

As I documented in my book, Rethinking Nigeria Border Security, and argued in my PhD thesis at the Nigerian Defence Academy, pouring endless funds into an unoptimised framework is not a long-term strategy. It has become critically urgent to fundamentally restructure our security apparatus. To achieve efficient outcomes and ensure our trillions are well-spent, Nigeria should implement several paradigm shifts.

First, we must acknowledge that our expansive and porous borders remain the primary arteries for arms smuggling, human trafficking, and transnational terrorism. The Federal Government should establish a dedicated National Border Security Force (NBSF), as I argued in the book. Critics might contend that this is simply adding another bureaucracy to an already bloated system. However, the NBSF will only succeed if it is fundamentally different by design. It must operate on a lean, technology-driven command structure. By enacting a seamless transfer mechanism, elite military and paramilitary officers can transfer their commissions to the NBSF without losing rank or benefits, thereby instantly populating the agency with experienced professionals. Its funding model must be strictly ring-fenced, operating under independent accountability mechanisms to ensure every naira translates to national border security.

…we must address the deployment of our armed forces. The military’s constitutional mandate is to protect Nigeria from external aggression. The prolonged deployment of troops for internal police work has stretched our armed forces thin and blurred the lines of civil law enforcement. However, given the high-intensity nature of current internal threats, the police are not yet fully capable of handling the frontline alone.

Creating the NBSF requires clearing up the current bureaucratic overlap. Border security duties must be completely removed from the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS). Customs should be strictly confined to revenue generation and trade facilitation at designated ports, while Immigration must focus entirely on visa processing, passports, and legal migration documentation. Eliminating these overlapping jurisdictions will drastically improve inter-agency efficiency.

Secondly, we must address the deployment of our armed forces. The military’s constitutional mandate is to protect Nigeria from external aggression. The prolonged deployment of troops for internal police work has stretched our armed forces thin and blurred the lines of civil law enforcement. However, given the high-intensity nature of current internal threats, the police are not yet fully capable of handling the frontline alone. What Nigeria requires is a phased, strategic withdrawal of the military from internal conflict zones. This pullback must be strictly conditional upon the concurrent capacity upgrades of the police. As the police scale up in capability and firepower, the military must systematically return to their primary duties of conventional warfare readiness and territorial defense.

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As the military steps back, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) must take its rightful place. But true internal security goes beyond federal decrees; it requires tapping into local intelligence networks and empowering genuine community policing that is firmly insulated from political interference at the state level, particularly states that are within borders and those with significant mineral resources. Police reform must be comprehensive. To restore morale, the NPF must immediately reverse all “special promotions” and ensure advancements are strictly merit-based. No quota-based promotions. But rank discipline is just the baseline. We must urgently overhaul training quality, bridge critical equipment gaps, improve overall welfare beyond basic salaries, and ruthlessly dismantle the culture of internal corruption that compromises field operations.

We cannot simply spend our way out of insecurity using an outdated and uncoordinated template. The current strategy of throwing trillions of naira at overlapping agencies, while neglecting grassroots intelligence and structural reform is unsustainable. We cannot even afford it in the long term.

Handing internal security wholly to the police and locking down our borders requires massive capital. Yet, funding without stringent oversight is futile. Simply stating that the anti-graft agencies must be “strengthened” is no longer sufficient. To protect our national security investments, the government must establish an independent audit unit, comprising staff from the EFCC, ICPC and CCB, specifically for security sector corruption.  Corruption is costing Nigerian lives.

Finally, modern intelligence gathering relies on accurate identity management. Nigeria currently suffers from fragmented databases. We must transition to a system in which exactly one agency, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), holds and manages all biometric and demographic data for citizens. A centralised database will drastically improve the ability of our security agencies in crime prevention.

We cannot simply spend our way out of insecurity using an outdated and uncoordinated template. The current strategy of throwing trillions of naira at overlapping agencies, while neglecting grassroots intelligence and structural reform is unsustainable. We cannot even afford it in the long term.

Umar Yakubu is the executive director of Center for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity.