The Nigerian Army traces its history to Lieutenant John Hawley Glover's Constabulary Force, which was largely composed of freed Hausa slaves in 1863.

[6] The Constabulary Force was established with the primary goal of protecting the Royal Niger Company and its assets from constant military incursions by the neighboring Ashanti Empire.

The roots of the ethnic cleavages which started to rip through the army after independence had some of their origins in colonial recruiting practices, with line infantry and the artillery being raised from the North, but during the expansion of the force during the Second World War a large proportion of more educated southerners being brought in to take up posts that required more technical training.

Like in Ghana, there was significant pressure to "Nigerianize" the armed forces, with, for example, two officers being promoted to Brigadier as a concession to public opinion on the occasion of the last British commander arriving in Lagos.

The rapid expansion of the Nigerian Army in the wake of the civil war witnessed a severe decline in troop quality.

Writing in a 1984 study, Major Michael Stafford of the United States Marine Corps noted the following: "Inexperienced, poorly trained and ineptly led soldiers manifested their lack of professionalism and indiscipline by massacres of innocent civilians and a failure to effectively execute infantry tactics.

General Gowon, Head of the Federal Military Government (FMG), is the accepted national leader and his popularity has grown since the end of the war.

The reorganization he instituted permitted 3 Division to successfully conduct the offensive operations that would ultimately lead to the end the civil war in Nigeria.

Anglophone members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) established ECOMOG, dominated by the Nigerian Army, in 1990 to intervene in the civil war in Liberia.

[34] Smaller army forces had previously carried out UN and ECOWAS deployments in the former Yugoslavia, Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone.

[35] The anti-colonial policy statement did not deter Nigeria under Generals Ibrahim Babangida in 1990 and Sani Abacha in 1997 from sending peacekeeping troops as part of ECOMOG under the auspices of ECOWAS into Liberia and later into Sierra Leone when civil wars broke out in those countries.

President Olusegun Obasanjo in August 2003 committed Nigerian troops once again into Liberia,[36] at the urging of the United States, to provide an interim presence until the UN's force UNMIL arrived.

In October 2004, Nigerian troops were deployed into Darfur, Sudan to spearhead an African Union force to protect civilians there.

Despite a disproportionate emphasis on the materiel and sophistication of the Nigerian Armed Forces, and despite possessing some formidable hardware, the Army has been hamstrung by technical deficiency and an exceptionally poor standard of maintenance.

[41][42][43] The Nigerian Army maintains at least eighty-two different weapon systems and 194 types of ammunition, of sixty-two different categories, from fourteen manufacturers.

[41] The Nigerian Army achieved an historic milestone after it activated its Aviation Corps in 2024 when it took delivery of two Bell UH-1H, "Huey" helicopters.

The Nigerian Army Aviation Corps has over 60 aircraft on order which includes: About $3.2 million was allocated for the development of a hangar to accommodate these incoming fleet at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Airport, Minna, Niger State.