Williams Anuku
The recent criticism by President Muhammadu Buhari on the nation’s armed forces, insisting their performance was woeful and that no excuses would be entertained again, may soon prompt a review of security votes by the Federal Government.
This became obvious on Sunday, when Senate President Ahmed Lawan paid President Buhari an unscheduled visit at the presidential villa, Abuja to proffer solutions about how the government could go about tackling emerging crisis in the polity, especially insecurity.
Lawan gave clues that inspite of shortcomings on the part of the security managers, they may be experiencing manpower shortage and equipment challenges in executing the war against terrorism and other social vices like kidnapping and banditry.
The President of the Senate also raised the conflict of interest in the ruling All Progressives Congress, saying if not professionally handled may mar the chances of the party in future.
Recall that the suspended National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole and the governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki have had frosty relationship which culminated in the decamping of the governor to the opposition.
The development had also snowballed into conflicts of who heads the party in the interim.
Lawan took time to explain his observations to State House Correspondents, “You know the country is facing very deep and serious security challenges and I have come to discuss with Mr. President what we discussed previously that we should do whatever it takes to improve the security situation in the country.
“We believe that the Senate and indeed the National Assembly is positively disposed to receiving even supplementary budget purposely to address the fundamental needs of the security agencies of our country. So that we are able to empower them, enable them to fight the Boko Haram in the North East, banditry and other security challenges across the country.
“Secondly, in the Senate, we believe we need to provide more resources for recruitment by the security agencies Army, the Navy, Air Force, Police, Immigration, the paramilitary generally.
“We need to have more manpower or personnel and this is not something you get on a platter of gold. Whoever wants to make an omelette will break an egg.
Section 14 sub-section 2b of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is very categorical and crystal clear, that the purpose of government shall be to provide for security and welfare of the people.
” Therefore, we must, we have no luxury of any option other than to address the security challenges more than any other thing. We provided for N500 billion intervention for COVID19 for the revised budget, and various agencies, the CBN, the NNPC and the IOCs provided for palliatives and some kind of interventions for the COVID challenge.
“I think we must tell ourselves the truth, that the security situation in the country especially in the northern part of the country, require that we give much more resources to the security agencies. And those who are heading these agencies especially the service chiefs, must sit up, in fact we must have milestones and timelines on how we are going to deal with this, we can’t just go on without any time frame for dealing with these issues.
“If after we provide some support and someone is found short of expectations, he should be shown the way out, if he refuses to go. Because the lives of Nigerians are so precious and therefore must be more important than any other considerations or sentiments. I believe that today, the most essential thing in government is to address the security challenges.
“I also had the opportunity to talk to Mr President and my leader about the challenges in the APC. I believe that we have to deal with these challenges, this is the ruling party of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, with the President, with the control of the National Assembly, with more governors than any other political party, the situation should not, must not be allowed to degenerate further than it has.
“I believe that must go into the constitution of our party and see how we are to address this but we must not allow this to continue as it is today. Because, the stability of APC is the stability of Nigeria, this is the party that is running the affairs of this country. So I believe that we have to sort this out and that will make our work even better and easier when we have a stable party.
“Because the party is supposed to be part of the apparatus of running government. We are supposed to run or operate or implement or execute the manifesto of the party. And therefore the party is so key, so central, so essential to ensuring that government whether on the executive or legislative side continues to face those issues in the manifesto and of course the manifesto will be to make Nigeria better.
“So, I had the opportunity to discuss that with the President who is the leader of the party in Nigeria and by the grace of God in the next few days we will see certain actions will be taken and we are praying that all our leaders in the party across the country will make every possible effort to get the party reconciled, “he stated.
Recall also that many civil society organizations, such as the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre CISLAC, have been criticizing the government over excessive budgeting as security votes, with little or no accountability on how such funds are spent.
