The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, summoned the Chief of Army Staff, COAS, Lt. General Tukur Buratai over the planned nationwide exercise code-named “Operation Positive Identification (OPI)” by the Nigerian Army.
This followed the adoption of a motion moved at the plenary under urgent national importance by the House Minority Leader, Hon Ndudi Elumelu which he described as a recipe to the possible militarization of the country.
While adopting a motion, the House mandated its committee on Army to interface with the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai on the issue and report back to the House for further legislative action.
Leading the debate on general principles of the motion, Hon Elumelu noted that if the Army goes ahead with the exercise, it would lead to possible militarization of Nigeria.
The Minority leader further noted that the exercise if not stopped would lead to infringement on fundamental rights of Nigerians as enshrined in the 199 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
According to Hon Elumelu, if allowed to take place, the exercise would downgrade innocent Nigerians to suspects and conquer people in their own land as well as lead to abuses and serious security issues.
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He said the exercise would also amount to an imposition of a state of emergency across the country by Army.
In his contribution to the debate, Hon Tobi Okechukwu said such exercise was not part of the mandate of the Nigerian Army but that of other security agencies such as the Police, Department of Security Service, DSS, the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS among others and called on members at plenary to support the motion.
Also contributing to the debate, Hon Kolawole Lawal described the planned Operation Positive Identification as an exercise in futility while Hon Ahmed Jaha said that by planning such an exercise, “the Army has run short of ideas on how to tackle security problems in the country.”
Hon Jaha stated that the proper thing to do by the Nigerian Army would be to deploy its personnel to fight the insurgents at the dreaded Zambiza forest in the North-East
After the debate on the general principles of the motion, the Speaker, Hon Femi Gbajabiamila put it into voice vote and it was unanimously adopted.
and then