Nigeria’s proposed defence-industrial collaboration with Türkiye presents an important opportunity to strengthen national security and deepen local manufacturing. But it must not become another procurement arrangement dressed as industrial cooperation.
For more than six decades, Nigeria has entered into defence partnerships with countries including Israel, China and the United States. While these engagements have provided equipment, training and technical assistance, the country continues to grapple with excessive dependence on imported defence equipment.
The proposed partnership with Türkiye therefore demands a different approach.
Türkiye has built a formidable defence industry by investing in research, technology, human capital and indigenous production. Nigeria should seek to learn from that experience, rather than merely become another market for Turkish defence products.
The objective should be simple: what can Nigeria acquire, learn, produce and eventually sustain locally?
This requires Nigeria to first establish what it actually needs.
The country urgently needs a comprehensive defence industrial database detailing annual equipment consumption, replacement cycles, procurement patterns, projected demand and existing indigenous manufacturing capacity.
Without reliable data, it is difficult to determine what should be imported, what can be produced locally and where genuine technological gaps exist.
This is particularly important because Nigerian defence manufacturers already possess capacity in several areas. Yet, some products that can be manufactured locally continue to be imported.
Such a practice undermines domestic investment, drains foreign exchange and discourages manufacturers from expanding their capabilities.
Where local capacity exists, government should deliberately utilise and strengthen it. Where critical capabilities are lacking, strategic partnerships should be deployed to bridge those gaps.
This is where Türkiye can become a valuable partner.
Nigeria should seek cooperation in areas where it lacks technology or expertise, including sophisticated surveillance, electronic warfare, air defence and other advanced systems, while demanding meaningful technology transfer and local participation.
The partnership must also go beyond assembling imported components.
Local assembly can be a useful starting point, but it should lead progressively to higher local content, skills development, research and development, maintenance capability and indigenous manufacturing.
Every agreement should therefore answer one fundamental question:
What will Nigeria be able to produce or sustain at the end of the partnership that it cannot do today?
If the answer is simply more imported equipment, then Nigeria has secured another supplier.
If the answer includes technology, skilled manpower, factories, intellectual property, research capacity and indigenous production, then Nigeria has secured a genuine industrial partnership.
Government must also provide a predictable market for competent local manufacturers through consistent procurement policies, realistic offtake arrangements, financing and local-content enforcement.
Defence industrialisation cannot thrive where manufacturers invest millions in production facilities but cannot secure sustainable demand.
Standardisation across the Armed Forces, where operationally feasible, should also be encouraged to reduce the cost of spare parts, maintenance, training and logistics while creating more predictable demand for local manufacturers.
Nigeria should equally resist measuring defence cooperation by the number of agreements signed or the value of contracts awarded.
The real measures should be technology transferred, local content achieved, jobs created, foreign exchange saved, production capacity established and capabilities retained in Nigeria.
The proposed Nigerian-Turkish partnership should therefore be welcomed, but negotiated from a position of clear national priorities.
Nigeria must move from asking “What can we buy?” to asking “What must we learn to build?”
Defence self-reliance does not mean producing everything locally. It means developing enough national capacity to manufacture, maintain, repair, upgrade and sustain critical capabilities, while using international partnerships to close genuine technological gaps.
If properly structured, the Türkiye partnership could become a catalyst for Nigerian defence industrialisation.
If not, it could simply create another channel for importing equipment that Nigeria may eventually learn to produce itself.
Nigeria must choose industrial capability over perpetual dependency. The goal should not merely be to acquire weapons, but to build the national capacity to develop, manufacture and sustain them.
