Nigeria's defence budget tells a tale of two metrics pulling apart. In raw naira terms, the country has never spent more on security, but as a share of national spending, defence has been in long decline, from 21.2% in 2013 to single digits by 2025. The critical question it raises is, did allocations respond to security crises? The Chibok Girls episode didn't reverse the slide, and Northwest banditry, which has been escalating since 2017, saw the share fall. The 2020 figure is the most damning: at peak insecurity, the budget response was a cut to 9%.
The one clear exception is 2025, where both absolute spend and share rebounded sharply, a likely response to combined pressure from banditry, Northeast insurgency, and Niger Republic instability. But the immediate reversal to a historic low of 9.3% in 2026 confirms this was a one-year surge, not a strategic shift.
