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The Nigerian Army (NA) the largest of the Nigerian Armed Forces, has about 67,000 personnel.

History
The original elements of the RWAFF in Nigeria were formed in 1900. During the Second World War, British-trained Nigerian troops saw action with the 1st (West Africa) Infantry Brigade, the 81st and  the 82nd (West Africa) Divisions who fought in the East African Campaign (World War II) and the Far East.

In Nigeria, from a force of 8,000 in five infantry battalions and supporting units, strength rose to around 120,000 in three divisions by the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970. In terms of doctrine, the task of the Federal Nigerian army was not fundamentally changed: its task was to close with and defeat an organised enemy.

The rapid expansion saw a severe decline in troop quality. The Nigerian expansion process led to an extreme shortage of commissioned officers, with newly-created lieutenant-colonels commanding brigades, and platoons and companies often commanded by sergeants and warrant officers. This resulted in tentative command and control and rudimentary staff work. One result of the weak direction was that the Federals’ three divisions fought independently, and competed for men and materiel. Writing in a 1984 study, Major Michael Stafford of the US Marine Corps noted that “Inexperienced, poorly trained and ineptly led soldiers manifested their lack of professionalism and indiscipline by massacres of innocent civilians and a failure to effectively execute infantry tactics.” Among the results was the 1967 Asaba massacre.

The influence of individual personalities are generally greater in the armies of developing states, as they tend to have weaker institutional frameworks. Key personalities involved in Nigeria included then-Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo is particularly important due to his efforts to reorganise his command, 3 Division, during the civil war to improve its logistics and administration. The reorganisation he instituted made the Division capable of carrying out the offensive that ended the civil war.

The Nigerian Army fought the civil war significantly underresourced; Obasanjo’s memoirs chronicle the lack of any stocks of extra equipment for mobilisation, and the ‘haphazard and unreliable system of procurement and provisioning,’ which stretched for the entire period of the war. Arms embargoes by several Western countries made the situation worse.

Structure
Divisions in the Nigerian Army were first formed during the Nigerian Civil War, when in August-September 1967, 1 Area Command at Kaduna was redesignated 1 Infantry Division, 2 Division was formed under Colonel Murtala Mohammed, and the then Lagos Garrison Organisation was renamed 3 Infantry Division, later to become 3 Marine Commando Division.

"At the end of the Civil War, the three divisions of the army were reorganised into four divisions, with each controlling territories running from North to South in order to deemphasise the former regional structure. Each division thus had access to the sea thereby making triservice cooperation and logistic support easier. This deployment formula was later abandoned in favour of the present assignment of sectors to the divisions. Thus 1 Division with HQ at Kaduna is allocated the North West sector; 2 Division with HQ at lbadan South West sector, 3 Division with HQ at Jos North East sector and 82 Division with HQ at Enugu South East sector."

Its formations include the 1st Division, headquartered in Kaduna in the north-west, and 2nd Division (HQ Ibadan in the South-West, includes 32 Artillery Brigade at Abeokuta), 3rd Armoured Division (HQ Rukuba Cantonment, Jos in the North-East, and including 21 Armoured Brigade Maiduguri, 23 Brigade Yola, and 33 Artillery Brigades), 81st Division (Amphibious) HQ in Lagos, which includes the 9th Brigade, based at the Ikeja compound in Lagos, 82nd Division(Airborne and Amphibious) HQ in Enugu in the South-East, which includes the 2 Brigade at Port Harcourt, 13 Brigade at Calabar and the 34 Artillery Brigade at Obinze/Owerri. The Composite Division at Enugu was formed in 1964 as 4th Infantry Division, in 1975 became Lagos Garrison Organization; in 1981 became 4th Composite Division; became a Composite Division in May 2002. 3rd Armoured Division was responsible in 1983 for the security of areas bordering Chad.

Lagos and Abuja have garrison commands with the Lagos garrison as large as a division. 81 Division was the youngest Division in the Nigerian Army. The Division was formed on 26 May 2002 when the Lagos Garrison Command (as it then was) was upgraded to a full-fledged Division. The Division therefore inherited the security roles hitherto performed by the defunct Lagos Garrison Command. However a later undated article in a Nigerian online newspaper says the 81 Division was later again renamed the Lagos Garrison Command. In the 1980s, the Army's brigades included the 7th Infantry Brigade in Sokoto. There are also Divisional Artillery Brigades, among which are the 32 and 34 Artillery Brigades, ordinance corps units as well as Combat Engineer Regiments, and many other service support units spread across the country.

Training and Doctrine Command was formed in 1981, and is located at Minna. It supervises the army's schools, including the Depot. The Army sponsors the Nigerian Military School at Zaria.

Nigerian military forces abroad
In December 1983, the new Major General Muhammadu Buhari regime announced that Nigeria could no longer afford an activist anti-colonial role in Africa. Anglophone ECOWAS members established ECOMOG, dominated by the Nigerian Army, in 1990 to intervene in the civil war in Liberia. The Army has demonstrated its capability to mobilize, deploy, and sustain brigade-sized forces in support of peacekeeping operations in Liberia. Smaller army forces have been previously sent on UN and ECOWAS deployments in the former Yugoslavia, Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone.

That policy statement did not deter Nigeria under Generals Ibrahim Babangida in 1990 and Sani Abacha in 1997 from sending ECOMOG peacekeeping forces under the auspices of ECOWAS into Liberia and later Sierra Leone when civil wars broke out in those countries. President Olusegun Obasanjo in August 2003 committed Nigerian troops once again into Liberia, at the urging of the United States, to provide an interim presence until the UN's force UNMIL arrived. Charles Taylor was subsequently eased out of power and exiled to Nigeria.

In October 2004, Nigerian troops again deployed into Darfur, Sudan to spearhead an AU force to stop the genocide in Darfur. Nigeria boasts to have contributed more than 20,000 troops/police to various UN missions since 1960. The Nigeria Police Force and troops have served in places like UNIPOM (UN India-Pakistan Observer mission) 1965, UNIFIL in Lebanon 1978, the UN observer mission, UNIIMOG supervising the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in 1988, former Yugoslavia 1998, East Timor 1999, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) 2004.

Nigerian officers have served as chiefs of defence in other countries, with Brigadier General Maxwell Khobe serving as Sierra Leone chief of staff in 1998-1999, and Nigerian officers acting as Command Officer-in-Charge of the Armed Forces of Liberia from at least 2007.

Chiefs of the Nigerian Army
Following is a chronological list of officers holding the position of General Officer Commanding (GOC) or Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

Equipment

 * AK-47
 * M16 rifle
 * FN FAL rifle
 * Heckler & Koch G3 rifle
 * Daewoo K2 rifle
 * SIG SG 540 rifle
 * FN FNC rifle
 * FN MAG machine gun
 * Beretta M 1951 pistol
 * Walther P5 pistol
 * Blowpipe missile (MANPADS) - 48 launchers
 * ZSU-23-4 (SPAAG)
 * ZU-23-2 (air defence gun) - 20
 * BM-21 (rocket artillery) - 11
 * L16 81mm Mortar
 * M-46 (field gun) - 7
 * OTO Melara Mod 56 (howitzer) - 18
 * Vickers tank - 170 (IISS Military Balance 2007, p. 287)
 * T-55 (medium tank) - 100, in poor serviceability (IISS 2007)
 * BTR-60 (APC) - 6
 * Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (tracked) - 150 Scorpion tank
 * Véhicule Blindé Léger - IISS Military Balance 2007 estimates Nigeria has '72 VBL (reported).'(p. 287)
 * Otokar Cobra light armoured vehicle - 193