Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State says Nigeria needs additional 100,000 troops for the war against insurgency to be won.
The governor stated this on Wednesday when the House of Representatives Committee on Defence visited him in Maiduguri, the state capital.
“I think there is a need to give the ban on the use of some certain weapons on paramilitary in the north-east for a certain period of time.
“Kindly inform the Speaker as well as the Senate President that they should advise the Federal Government to do massive recruitment of up to 100,000 into the Nigerian Army,” he told the visiting lawmakers.
The governor added, “How? They should come and recruit the locals irrespective of whether they have the western education or not.”
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Zulum recalled that during the civil war, many people were recruited to help the Nigerian troops win, stressing they were later demobilised after the war ended.
He emphasised on the training and retraining of troops deployed in the terrorism war on a regular basis.
The governor sought that half of the troops to be recruited should come from his state.
According to him, there are able-bodied men that have the fitness requirements to be recruited into the Nigerian Army.
“We need to recruit nothing less than 50,000 men from Borno, we have able-bodied men that can join the Nigerian Armed Forces on an ad-hoc basis,” Zulum said.
