Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) to resign over their inability to safeguard the lives and property of Nigerians since 2015.
Senator Abaribe insisted that Buhari and the APC had told Nigerians to stone them if they fail and that “it is now time to pick stones to stone them” in view of their obvious failure.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan cut Abaribe short.
He called on Abaribe and all those who are going to make contributions to the debate to be apolitical.
He said that bandits and Boko Haram insurgents do not operate on partisan grounds when they kill citizens.
In his contribution, Senator Abudullahi Adamu, faulted the Senate President for not calling on Abaribe to withdraw his comments.
Lawan had on Tuesday promised that the Senate would dedicate its plenary on Wednesday to debate the worsening security situation in the country and proffer a way forward.
Senate Majority Leader, Senator Yahaya Abudullahi, raised the motion titled: “Nigerian security challenges: Urgent need to restructure, review and reorganize the current security architecture.”
The motion was supported by 105 other Senators.
Abdullahi, in his lead debate, called on his colleagues to note the recent upsurge of security-related challenges and the devastating loss of lives, limbs and properties that it unleashed on the nation.
He further urged the Senate to note the comprehensive new National Security Strategy that the government unfolded in December 2019, “with its very clear statement of goals, objectives and challenges that faced the nation particularly those challenges whose recent upsurge have a direct and devastating impact on the lives and safety of the people.”
The security challenges according to him, include Terrorism and violent extremism, armed banditry, kidnapping, militancy and separatist agitation.
Others are Pastoralists/farmer clashes and Cattle
Rustling; Organized crime; Piracy and sea robbery; and Cross border crimes of smuggling and illegal drugs and firearms trafficking.
He insisted that even though the Senate appreciates the recent effort to redefine the nation’s approaches to the security challenges, the “implementation strategy must be operationalized in a manner that takes a critical and intrusive review of the nature, structure and disposition of the security institutions, particularly the Police, Civil Defence, Intelligence, Customs, Immigration, etc.”