Buratai urges National Assembly to review military budget

• NAF to aid agencies against insecurity
Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, has urged the National Assembly to prevail on the Ministry of Budget and National Planning to review the budget of the military.

While defending the 2019 budget proposal of the military before the House of Representatives Committee on Army yesterday, he urged them to exempt the army from the existing budget ceiling or envelope allocation system.He based his submission on the on-going structural changes, volatile security environment and massive engagement of troops in virtually all the 36 states of the federation.

This, he said, was because his outfit was allotted N232.4 billion as against N472.8 billion requested from the national planning ministry in the 2019 budget.

Buratai explained that for the 2019 budget, N350.5 billion would be expended on Nigerian Army Personnel Emolument, N43.6 billion for Army Overhead Budget, and N78.5 billion for Nigerian Army Capital Budget.

The COAS, who decried poor budgetary allocations to his outfit, faulted rumours of rivalry between the army and the air force in the counter-insurgency war.In another vein, the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has reiterated its commitment to support security agencies with real time

NAF also expressed willingness to make available its air assets for tactical air support missions and The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, disclosed this yesterday, while playing host to the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, and the Director General of Department of State Services (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, at NAF headquarters, Abuja.

The IGP and DG of DSS, after a closed-door meeting with the CAS, undertook a guided tour of facilities at the new Geospatial Intelligence Data Centre (GIDC) and Strategic Air Operations Centre (SAOC).The GIDC, which is equipped with high-tech computers, was established to enhance.While inspecting the facilities, the acting IGP expressed delight and satisfaction with the cutting edge technologies and sophisticated computers at the centres.