Meet the bowser, a navy blue 7-ton, 10-foot-high, 25-feet-long Ford F750 jet refueling truck.
Across its tank in white lettering are the words “Nigerian Air Force.”
The hulking machine sits in the driveway of Justice Chuku on Thomasville Road, leaking oil and collecting cobwebs.
Chuku, a native of Nigeria and a local defense contractor who owns BCGneeds, ordered the truck and two others just like it for the Nigerian Air Force in 2013. The Ohio company that built the truck, Bosserman Aviation Equipment Inc., filed for bankruptcy. Chuku’s vice president arranged to have the truck shipped to Tallahassee for safe keeping.
The truck was covered up until nine months ago, said BCGneeds vice president Kimberley McMillan. Since they uncovered it, it’s become quite a conversation piece for Tallahasseeans. It’s even got its own sub-reddit thread.
“Police come and tell me they’ve gotten calls,” Chuku said. You can imagine, he said. His foreign accent. The words “Nigerian Air Force.” People wonder.
He hopes to eventually ship it to Nigeria and deliver it to the NAF as intended.
The man behind the truck
Chuku, 59, didn’t start off in the military equipment business. He moved to Florida from his native Nigeria in 1978 with the goal of becoming a U.S. citizen and a commercial airline pilot.
He was a cadet at the Nigerian Defense Academy in Kaduna. He went to flight training school in the United Kingdom. But the major airlines wanted pilots who also had bachelor’s degrees, Chuku said.
So he went to college. Got his bachelor’s degree at the University of South Carolina. Then he got a master’s degree at the University of Iowa.
While getting his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he got interested in studying the First Amendment. He was ABD — all but dissertation completed — when he took an academic career pivot and enrolled in law school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
After graduation, he returned to Florida to work for Holland and Knight in 2000.
He said he passed the Florida Bar, but ran into a problem with his application when it was discovered he had not listed a 1987 arrest for weapons possession on his law school application.
The charges were dismissed. He mentioned it in his bar application. He was invited to reapply but decided against it.
“It was so time-consuming. So grueling,” he said. “It was not worth my time.”
Chuku moved to Tallahassee around 2003 because his wife — an eye doctor — loved the hills and trees. He then got into real estate. After the real estate market collapsed in 2008, Chuku looked for something else to do.
Meanwhile, Chuku’s former classmates from the military academy rose to the rank of general in the Nigerian Air Force. They reached out to Chuku. Asked him to handle procurement of aircraft and equipment.
“This is where my legal experience helped me,” Chuku said.
He started BCGneeds and went through the registration with the Department of State, Commerce, Transportation and Homeland Security.
Since then he’s bought everything from radar to rice for the Nigerian Air Force and federal government. They’ve procured bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, airplane tires and electronics.
Much of the material they ship has a dual military and civilian use, McMillan said.
There is lots of paperwork to fill out. Each purchase requires a separate application that can run 20 pages or longer.
”They have to be careful you don’t supply something to an enemy of the U.S.,” Chuku said.
As a middleman, Chuku deals with vendors from all over the country, files the necessary paperwork and deals with ports and airports to get parts and supplies shipped where they need to go. He said BCGneeds has earned a reputation as a company that delivers quality products.
BCGneeds has other clients that Chuku said he can’t disclose for proprietary reasons. Almost all his clients are in Africa, and the Nigerian Air Force is BCgneeds’ primary client.
“We have everything in their inventory,” Chuku said.
And yes, it’s a real thing. The Nigerian Air Force is one of the largest in Africa, with 10,000 personnel and 261 aircraft, including 23 attack jets and interceptors.
Final destination
The Bosserman bankruptcy was a big setback for the company, Chuku said.
It delayed the completion time on the truck modifications, McMillan said.
“As a result, the administration changed at the NAF,” she said. “The current administration had to be briefed on the terms of the contract and abide by the terms prior to delivery of the truck.”
While they wait for that process to be completed, the bowser remains parked outside Chuku’s home. They can’t drive it on the roads. And when it is time to ship it out, they’ll have to get it onto an 18-wheeler flatbed, McMillan said.
“The truck is empty and ready to be shipped,” she said.