INTRODUCTION
The Nigerian army is organized functionally into various combat arms, these arms include infantry and armoured, the combat support arms (Artillery), engineers and signals etc. There are seventeen (17) corps training schools in Nigeria including Nigerian Army School of Artillery.
The Nigerian army school of Artillery (NASA) is one of the military training established schools in Nigeria. It is located in Kachia, in Kachia Local Government area of Kaduna state part of Nigeria. The school is headed by the Commander Brigadier General E.I Ogundana. Currently, the Nigerian Navy school f Armament Technology (NNSAT) is co-located on the same premises with the Nigerian army school of Artillery, some of the reasons being that it would benefit both in joint operations as the weapon handlings of the army artillery are similar to most of the navy’s holdings as well as the mutual use of vast weapons range.
It is also envisaged that the co-location of the two schools would lead to improved interoperability between the Navy and Army in joint operations.
The Nigerian army school of artillery has trained lots of military personnel who are serving in various areas of Nigeria as security experts. This School of Artillery had been the military formation in Nigeria. They are committed to training military personnel’s for peace and security in all parts of Nigeria. Group (2017).
The problem of insecurity which used to be one of the lowest in the hierachy of social problems facing Nigeria seems to have assumed alarming proportions since the end of the Nigerian civil war which ended in 1970.
Nwadialor (2011)
In recent times, Nigeria has witnessed an unprecedented level of insecurity, this has made national security threat to be a major issue for the government and has brought about huge allocation of the national budget to security in order to ameliorate the rate of insecurity in the country.
The current insecurity challenges in Nigeria especially the Boko Haram insurgency in parts of the northern Nigeria and more recently the fulani herdsmen terror caught the government and the security agencies unawares.
Since insecurity is one of the difficult challenges facing Nigeria, it therefore become imperative that there should be a total transformation in training the military personnels. Funds should be provided for the purchase of sophisticated weapons and new procedures of training should be introduced to meet up with the security threats ravaging the country.
It is worthy to note here that the Nigerian Army is the largest component of Nigerian armed forces which are responsible for the warfare operations. Artillery soldiers are responsible for surveillance and indirect fire in order to engage the enemy.
The military units in Nigeria are perceived as one of the best fighting forces in Africa. Akintola (2017). The army has a streamlined structure and the number of members is over 100,000 people.
This paper is focused on the training transformations in Nigerian Army school of Artillery, the current state of the school, the challenges they have faced and the steps taken in order to meet up with the current security challenges.