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From the article: "But Nigeria’s army...still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces."

That's almost exactly the same percentage as in the USA[1].

A more insightful measure would be against GDP rather than government budget total.

USA = 3.8%, Nigeria = 0.5%

Interestingly it had been climbing for years, and reached 0.8% in 2011, but has been falling since then:

Given Nigeria's security challenges, I would have expected greater military spending. At 0.5% it's among the lowest on earth.