CHALLENGES MILITATING AGAINST EFFECTIVE ARMED FORCES IN JOINT OPERATIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria seems to be faced with myriad insecurity threats or challenges resulting to the establishment of military exercises and combat operations to tackle such menace. Such operations which are known as Joint Operations are carried out by the Armed Forces who are diligently and gallantly being prosecuted for specific purposes and assignments to resolve different security concerns. The aim of this study is to factor out and examine the major challenges militating against the effectiveness of the Armed Forces in Joint Operations in Nigeria. However, the extant literature on the subject matter seems to be unavailable as other literature are more of discourse on internal security operations. For a symbolic understanding of the study, specific concepts were clarified. The study also examined the emergence of the Armed Forces tracing it to the colonial epoch. Having use diligent varieties of secondary sources as methodology of the research, the study finds out that despite the heavy presence of the military and its joint operations, obstacles like lack of manpower and understaffing, logistic constrain, corruption, training mode, strategy and tactics among others form the bases of their setbacks and their capacity to curtail the persistent conflicts to be threatened or questioned. The study further reveals the need for the Nigerian state to review such challenges beguiling joint operations for not just achieving of peace but for strategic economic development of a contributing functional and serviceable Armed Forces of standard specifications.