Nigerian Senate raises fresh security concern

David Mark
The President of the Senate

Nigerian Senate raises fresh security concern

The Nigerian Senate has mandated its committees to work out modalities to address the security threat in the country.

The development came as Nigeria called on the United Nations and member-states to do more in the global fight against the menace.

Consequently, the President of the Senate, David Mark, called for an executive session as senate resumed sitting on Tuesday.

The session

In the session, which lasted for about two hours, Mark drew the attention of the senators to the recent bombings in Borno and Yobe states in the northern part of Nigeria where scores of people, including security men were killed.

Senators who spoke on the matter condemned the bombings and stressed the need for holistic action.

The lawmakers noted that in view of the security challenges in the country, it has become imperative to have a session with the heads of security organisations in the country as well as the National Security Adviser (NSA), Gen. Andrew Azazi, to work out a fresh strategy that would tackle the problem.

Addressing a press conference at the end of the session, the Chairman of Senate Committee on Information, Media and Publicity, Eyinnaya Abaribe, said the meeting was devoted to security challenges in the country and that some committees had been mandated to discuss with security chiefs.

The way forward

It was resolved that while the Senate committees were meeting over the modality to adopt in tackling the situation, the leadership of the Senate should meet with the president with a view to working out the way forward.

At another forum on Tuesday, Mark said that the National Assembly was working on measures to approve new funding for the Nigerian military to enable it tackle effectively the challenges of insecurity in the country.

The Senate President also said that the current challenges had become a great financial burden to the military as most of the funds it is currently using to tackle the menace of insecurity, especially the war on terrorism, were not captured in the 2011  budget as they were never expected when the current budget was being worked on.

Speaking at a three-day interactive session on civil-military relations organised by Army Headquarters Abuja, Mark said that the military’s participation in Internal Security Operations (ISOs) had necessitated a special budgetary arrangement in form of operational funds that would take care of extra-budgetary operations.

The UN perspective

The UN in general is concerned that terrorists are still beating the system put in place since 2001 even though there were still areas of improvements.

Rising from a Security Council meeting that lasted into the late hours on Monday, Nigeria and other council members heard reports from UN committees charged with the enforcement of global anti and counter terrorism resolutions and sanctions.

Nigeria’s Ambassador, Raff Bukun-Olu Onemola, said that the recent meetings and prior resolutions on the subject had produced “significant progress over the last decade.”  
In his words, “despite improvements, more need to be done among other things, build new partnerships in and among regions of the world to defeat terrorism.”

Onemola, who is also the Deputy Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the UN, called on the UN committees “to expedite action on the implementation of resolution 1624 (2005),” which asked all states to cooperate to strengthen the security of their international borders by enhancing terrorist screening and passenger security procedures, with a view to preventing those terrorists from entering their territory.

NP/Adekusibe/Williams