The United States government on Thursday donated 24 Mine-Resistant Armour Protected (MRAP) vehicles to the Nigerian military.
The armoured vehicles worth N2.2 billion were presented to the Nigerian army in Lagos by a representative of the US government, Patrick Doyle.
“As part of the continuing support from United States to the government, and the people of Nigeria to defeat Boko Haram, I am proud to stand here today as the representative of the US secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, and commander and the representative of the US Africa command, General David Rodriguez, to present the donation of this 24 Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected (MRAP) vehicles to the Nigerian army,” Doyle said.
The US government representative stated that the equipment needed to be serviced and fixed with good spare parts before they could start operating. The responsibility of carrying out the repairs and purchasing the spare parts now lies with the Nigerian government.
Doyle said: “The repairs of the vehicle is up to the Nigerian government to do; they can repair them on their own if they have the facility to do that, but of course, the spare parts are very particular to this vehicle and we have been in discussion with the army previously and we are working out the modalities of how we will get those parts to them.
“They will have to order those parts from the United States and we will work out those conditions. Nigeria is also in the process of receiving eight more of this vehicle through the same programme, which is called the excess defence article program, designed to transfer excess US military equipment to partner nation.”
