By Gabriel Atumeyi
365Daily – A former Member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Victor Afam Ogene, has slammed the National Assembly for not showing enough concern over rising insecurity across the country.
Speaking when he appeared on AIT’s Inside The Parliament Programme on Tuesday, May 11, 2021, Ogene cited the Parliament’s lack of robust oversight over funds released for purchase of arms and related expenses in the prosecution of the war against insurgency/insecurity, as an example.
The ex-Spokesman of the 7th Assembly of the House of Representatives said the present crop of Federal Lawmakers need to get involved in actions that the Executive is taking to secure the country.
He said: “The stage that we are in has gone past moving of motions. There has to be action and one particular definition of a Parliament which I like is the one which says a ‘Parliament can do everything except change a man into a woman, and a woman into a man’.
“So, there is much more that the Parliament can do to show they are really concerned about the situation. For instance, we have many of our young men and officers fighting this war over the past 10 – 11 years and from what we read and from what we hear, it seems that we willingly put them in harm’s way because nobody is auditing the weapons that have been given to them.
“Only yesterday, I saw a video where some soldiers were asked to leave an empty hall that they had camped in Zamfara State, to go out and sleep in the open. That has made them sitting ducks.
“We also heard Senator Ali Ndume only last week talking of the Nigerian Army rationing ammunition, yet we see these bandits with chains and chains of ammunition. So what is happening to the various funds that were budgeted by the military?
“Even though I know security and intelligence is not something that should be discussed in the open, but we want to see action. We are in an emergency. We are in a war situation whether we like it or not. And if you are in a war situation you find out what are those things that are keeping the morale of the boys down. These weapons, where do they go?
“There must be a hearing, public or private, but at the end of the day we must see action. No officer has been made to pay for any negligence in this battle and so it’s just, for me, business as usual.”
The All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwart also chided the Legislators for ditching their oversight role over the Executive, saying they have chosen instead to act as “lackeys” of the Executive.
“The Parliament needs to stamp its foot and let the country know that we are in a situation of war.
“From the onset of the 9th Assembly, they have made themselves out as lackeys, for want of a better word, of the Executive and that is not what is envisaged of the Legislature anywhere in the world. The Legislature is supposed to be an active check on the Executive. We are talking of funding, we are talking of insecurity.
“Just last week, it was discovered that N39.9 billion worth of duplicated projects were in the budget. That is a sum of money that should have gone into the fight against insurgency.
It will shock you to know that in last year’s budget, National Assembly members, different from Zonal Interventions, got N100 million each from the country’s capital vote. What for? To go and use for skeletal projects in constituencies. This is not the time for it.”
He further stated that what should be done at the moment is to “gather whatever resources we can and channel it into the fight against insecurity”, while also addressing youth restiveness through job creation.
“The question is, how do we go about it. We know that a lot of it comes through youth restiveness so what are we doing to create employment? It is not about tokenism, giving somebody N500. What are the plans? There seems to be no plan anywhere. Both from the Legislature and the Executive to combat youth restiveness.
“I think that these sums of money need to go into a pool, at a time when we were taking about building standard hospitals to combat COVID-19 but now, thank God COVID-19 is taking a second place. Something like youth unemployment, if you tackle it in the six regions, I know that we have gone too deep and that guns have entered into the hands of non-state actors, but if we start now, we can reduce the number of people that are recruited into the ranks of the insurgents and tribal agitators,” he stated.
Hon. Ogene further stated that, as an urgent step, the National Assembly must give fillip to the Supreme Court judgement on the illegality of Caretaker committees in the states, as well as repeal and re-enact the Police Act, to give birth to, especially, State Police.
“If we allow the local government system and state police to work, then we may well be on the highway to handling our nation’s current security quagmire,” Hon. Ogene stated.