The Minister of Defence, Maj. Gen. Bashir Magashi (rtd.) has said that Nigeria will sustain funding for its Military Industrial Complex, which would leverage on Research and Development to improve Nigeria’s defence capabilities.
The Minister disclosed this on Saturday during a meeting with the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Prof. Sulaiman Bogoro, for the proposed establishment of the National Research and Development Foundation (NRDF) in Abuja.
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The Defence Minister on Saturday emphasized that leveraging on research and development would be a catalyst for building Nigeria’s defence capabilities and that the Nigerian Armed Forces have in their pipelines, production capacities that can be implemented on the battlefront.
“Leveraging R&D over a period of time would reinforce defence capabilities and serve as force multipliers in the internal and external defence imperatives, hence the need to drum support for the proposed NRDF,” Magashi said.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported in August that the Nigerian Airforce had the highest Capital Expenditure Ceiling allocation among parastatals in the Ministry of Defense, as it got N31.97 billion from the ministry’s total Capital Expenditure Ceiling of N120.04 billion for the year 2021.
The Nigerian Army came second with 23.22% at N27.87 billion, while the Navy got 16.92% of the Defence Ceiling at N12.04 billion.
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Last week, the House of Reps Committee on the Army called for larger capital projects allocations in the Army’s budget for 2021 – to enable the Nigerian Army to purchase more weapons to deal with insecurity in the country.
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