President Bola Tinubu has approved the recruitment of 28,000 additional soldiers and 50,000 police officers as his administration moves to expand Nigeria’s security manpower and strengthen its response to terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other criminal activities.
The development was disclosed on Sunday by the spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Dele Alake, in a statement outlining the administration’s proposed Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan.
According to Alake, the military expansion is intended to increase the number of troops available for deployment and improve operational effectiveness across the country.
The President has also approved the recruitment of 50,000 police officers to strengthen internal security and policing capacity.
Beyond manpower expansion, the administration has created four new Nigerian Army divisions and restructured existing formations to widen operational coverage and enable troops to respond more quickly to security threats.
The new defence strategy also includes expanded military training infrastructure.
Two additional Army depots have been approved for Osogbo, Osun State, and Amasiri-Edda, Ebonyi State, with each facility designed to accommodate 6,000 recruits at a time.
The two depots therefore have a combined training capacity of 12,000 recruits, while 5,210 recruits are already undergoing training at the Osogbo facility.
For Southwest Nigeria, the plan also includes a 700-unit military barracks project in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, which the campaign council said was part of wider investment in military accommodation and operational infrastructure.
Alake said the Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan would provide a long-term framework for aligning defence priorities, operational requirements, capability development and expenditure with Nigeria’s current and anticipated security challenges.
The APC campaign council also highlighted what it described as security gains recorded under Tinubu’s administration.
It said military operations had resulted in the elimination of more than 15,000 Boko Haram terrorists and bandits over the last three years, while more than 130,000 Boko Haram fighters and their dependants had surrendered through Operation Safe Corridor, the Federal Government’s rehabilitation and reintegration programme for repentant insurgents.
Earlier in June 2026, Tinubu had cited a figure of more than 124,000 fighters and dependants who had surrendered through Operation Safe Corridor, while also reporting that more than 13,000 terrorists had been neutralised in the preceding year.
The campaign council said the new defence framework would combine sustained military operations with intelligence gathering, modern technology and non-kinetic interventions.
It said the strategy was intended to improve combat readiness, address critical capability gaps, optimise defence resources and minimise unnecessary expenditure and wastage.
According to Alake, the broader objective is to reposition Nigeria’s security architecture towards a more coordinated, intelligence-led, technology-enabled and prevention-oriented system capable of confronting terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other forms of criminality.
