Reps restate commitment toward finding solutions to ravaging insecurity 

The leadership of the House of Representatives on Wednesday reiterated the Parliament’s resolve towards proffering lasting solutions to the myriad of security challenges facing the country.

The Deputy Speaker, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, gave the assurance in Abuja during the resumed debate on national security.

Hon. Kalu, who presided over the session, explained that “what the House is looking for is a solution, and I’m sure this Parliament, at the end of our conversation, will come up with a resolution that will be the House resolution. For now, conversations in this room are personal opinions.

“They are not House positions, like the Speaker said yesterday. Every opinion expressed here should not be misinterpreted by the press as the position of the House. The position of the House will come at the end of this engagement, when we will summarise all inputs and come out with a document.

“I say this because we have seen a lot of narratives out there from our conversation yesterday. Please let us be well-guided, especially those who are outside this chamber, that this is personal opinion, not the position of the House.”

In her contribution, Chairman, House Committee on Women Affairs, Hon. Kafilat Ogbara renewed the call for State policing, just as she tasked the State Governors on the need to redouble their efforts in securing their jurisdictions.

She maintained that “the President cannot be everywhere. He cannot be in Sokoto, he cannot be in Zamfara… He cannot even be in Lagos State, his own state. We need our Governors to do more. And this is the right time for us as a House to legislate on the right legal framework for our state policing.

“As politicians, we say every politics is local. For me, I may not be a security expert, but I know that every security is local. We need a security situation where our security operatives will be communicable. Where Nigerians can call any security operative at any hour of the day, and they are sure to get the right response. And of course, an interactive one at that. Where we have that, that is where we have the right policing.”

On his part, Hon. Sada Soli, who spoke on behalf of the 92 members of the North West Caucus, argued that North West’s “security challenges trajectory landscape is a deeply complex one, and very multidimensional. The challenges are not just criminal, but structural, rooted in environmental stress, weak governance, and economic marginalisation. Tackling this threat demands a holistic strategy that combines security operations, security, operations with social, economic, and environmental interventions.”

To effectively tackle the menace, he urged the Federal Government to make efforts to reform land and livestock governance, addressing climate response and pressure, and ensuring affected communities are meaningfully taken part in providing solutions to our security threats.”

While expressing concern over the challenges associated with weak enforcement of reforms and policy directives, he expressed excitement that the Federal Government is trying to set up a transition that will take us forward in getting out of open grazing. If the Federal Government can fashion out a good transition that we can exit and get into ranching, that will be a fantastic effort.

“Open grazing laws are a part of the law, and ranching is not uniformly enforced. This is also another challenge. There is political resistance to these laws. We must look at that. There is an arms control difficulty. It’s difficult to control arms in this locality, particularly in the Northwest. Why? Because of the proliferation of arms in the remote forested areas is logistically very, very difficult.”

On his part, Hon. Murktar Betara Aliyu, who spoke on behalf of the North East Caucus, lamented that Nigerian Police dependence on State Governments called for a review of security funding across board.

“If our Police depend on state Governors, how do we have them operate very well? And again, Mr Speaker, when I was in the Appropriation again, I had some observations. This is our budgetary system, where we only bring in budget and send the budget back to the President.”

While citing some of the reforms initiated while serving as Chairman, House Committee on Appropriations in the 9th Assembly, Hon. Aliyu said: “We look at the defence budget, generally the army, the navy, the air force, and the police. It has a larger amount, like now in 2025, we have over 1.7 trillion. The Armed Forces budget is only recurrent. There is nothing in the capital. With a budget of 1.7 trillion, especially 1.2 trillion, the recurrent is 900 billion. That means we are not doing the budget.

“During my time in the 9th assembly, Mr Speaker, the police had no operational account from inception. They depend on state governments. It was in 2019, the chairman of the police, that is Kumo, and the chairman of the Senate, we sat together, so we met with the minister of finance, and they opened up an operational account for the Police. It doesn’t tally well. In 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, most of our colleagues who chaired security committees understand the work we did there.

“There are a lot of money in our service-wide vote that are kept for those security services. In the appropriation committee, we have to report to the president that, Mr President, keeping monies in the service-wide vote for the security services does not tally well with our oversight function.

“So we decided to pull out those funds directly and give the security agencies under their own capital. Because we observed, even at that time, the army had a budget of 900 billion with just 100 billion capital. What do you buy with the 100 billion capital? Nothing. Again, Mr Speaker, we have to understand the military procurement. In military procurements, there are issues. During our oversights, when we were in defence, we travelled with some of our colleagues to produce an armoured tank. One armoured tank takes about two months. You don’t just go on the shelf and buy an armoured tank or MRAP.

 So, Mr Speaker, you, as our leader, I remember the last time we visited our president, his emphasis was the military welfare. He even cited an example for us that he went to the Ikeja barracks personally, not officially. He is surprised they don’t even have a toilet.

“So he decided to set up a committee to go around the nation for the establishment or refurbishment of our barracks and build staff quarters for our officers and our soldiers.

“And equally, he (Tinubu) said he has directed them to the Armed Forces and the Police salary. And I think he is thinking of taking up from 200 to 300 per cent, you can remember, during our visit,” he noted.

One of the lawmakers from the South East, queried the rationale behind the reintegration of bandits into society, said: “What is their integration, not for Nigeria, what exactly are they going to do in society? If we can answer their question, the problem will be solved”.

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