The Senate said on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, if the continued cases of Kidnapping, armed banditry, and insurgency in the country must come to an end, there was the urgent need for Nigeria to look outside the annual budgetary allocation.
The Senate also urged the Nigerian Navy to establish a naval base in Makun Onu in Ogun State to tackle the rising kidnapping of residents in the state.
The senators implored the Federal Government to direct the inspector-general of police, Mohammed Adamu, to step up security in the affected communities in the state.
The upper legislative chamber also asked the federal government to make available helicopters to help tackle kidnapping and other criminal activities.
Speaking after deliberations on a motion by Olalekan Mustapha, the APC senator representing Ogun East on the rising kidnapping of citizens living in Ogun river line areas, the president of the senate, Ahmed Lawan, said he had been holding meetings with heads of security agencies on how best to mitigate insecurity in the country and came to a conclusion that what was required was improved funding to solve our security problems.
Lawan, who noted that there was an urgent need to ensure adequate security to promote and attract investment and investors in the country, said there was the need to design other means of raising funds to fight insecurity.
According to him, the executive arm of government was committed to tackling the security challenge in the country.
He said: “Let me share my experience, in the last one month or so, I have been holding regular meetings with security agencies; the DG NIA, DG SSS, IG of police, the NSA, including the ministers of communication, FCT and a host of others and what we are trying to do is to get a better and more appropriate and result oriented approach to fighting kidnapping and the insecurity we face. I have said it here that no amount of resources would be too much for combating insecurity because we need to secure our people, we need to secure this country.
“It would remain a pipe dream if we continue to ask people to come to Nigeria to invest and actually even those inside the country may not invest properly if the security situation remains very dicey. This is something we have to do together with the executive arm of government and in fact, I was looking for something out of the ordinary for funding because the way we budget I am not sure if we would be able to deal this challenge at this moment.
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