Failed Coup Plot Influenced Tinubu’s Decision To Expand Army Divisions – Military Sources

Some senior military officers have asserted that the failed September 2025 coup plot may have influenced President Bola Tinubu’s decision to expand the Nigerian Army with four additional divisions.

Naijaonpoint reports that the proposed expansion will increase the Army’s field divisions from eight to 12 and provide for the recruitment of an additional 28,000 personnel.

In an interview with Punch, a senior military intelligence operative disclosed that intelligence assessments conducted after the September 2025 failed coup plot significantly influenced the ongoing reforms within the security architecture.

The officer said security planners concluded that preventing future unconstitutional attempts to seize power required strengthening and improving the military’s operational capabilities.

The source said, “Given the scale of destruction security agencies believed the failed coup plot could have caused had it succeeded, it is understandable that the government would seek to eliminate every vulnerability capable of supporting another unconstitutional takeover.”

Another military officer with the Nigerian Air Force also said many military leaders were disturbed by the failed coup plot and had since devised measures to eliminate any possibility of attempts to topple a democratically elected government.

According to him, part of the strategy could be the expansion of the military divisions, stressing that internal assessments of public reactions following reports of the failed coup plot also influenced the government’s security calculations.

The Air Force officer emphasised that authorities believed public reactions did not demonstrate a widespread willingness among citizens to resist any unconstitutional change of government openly, reinforcing the need to strengthen preventive measures.

The source argued that recent changes across the country’s security institutions, including the planned expansion of Army formations, should be viewed within that broader strategic framework.

He noted that executing a successful military coup had become considerably more difficult because of advances in surveillance technology, intelligence gathering, and command-and-control systems.

The Air Force officer said, “From the government’s perspective, the safest option is to ensure that any future attempt becomes practically impossible to organise.

“The reforms may improve internal security operations, but they also increase the resilience of the constitutional order by making the security architecture stronger and more difficult to compromise.

“Any modern coup would require sophisticated weapons, secure communications, extensive logistics, movement of military hardware, and a network of trusted collaborators operating without detection.

“When those requirements are combined with Nigeria’s political, ethnic and institutional realities, the chances of successfully executing such an operation become extremely slim.”