Ohanaeze, Afenifere, NCF Ask Buhari To Honour Reps’ Summons

Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo so­cio-cultural organisation; Pan-Yoru­ba socio-political organi­sation, Afenifere; National Consultative Front (NCF), and Prince Tony Momoh, chief­tain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), have thrown their weight behind the House of Representatives, asking President Muhammadu Bu­hari to honour the House invi­tation following the killing of farmers in Borno on Saturday by Boko Haram Insurgents.

The House of Represen­tatives on Tuesday resolved to invite President Buhari to appear before it to explain cir­cumstances surrounding the current state of insecurity in the North-East and other plac­es in the country.

The members of the House of Representatives are representing their various constituents and they have right to invite the president to appear before them over se­curity situation. So, President Buhari must honour the invi­tation if he is representing the people of Nigeria.

This is a good develop­ment. Why won’t President Buhari appear before them? Is he President of Daura or President of Nigeria? In as much as he is still President of Nigeria, he must appear before the House because the President has failed the peo­ple by refusing to refurbish the security architecture of the country.

“Nigeria needs security forces that are proactive and intelligent gathering and not one sided security forces.

“It’s unfortunate that se­curity operatives in Nigeria are one sided so the president needs to bring in experts ir­respective of state or region they come from.

“President Buhari was elected to find solution to Ni­geria’s problems especially the insecurity but unfortu­nately he has failed the people by refusing to find solution to the country’s problems,” Ibeg­bu said.

Afenifere also on Tues­day said it is mandatory for Buhari to brief the House of Representatives on the true state of the security situation in the country.

Speaking with Daily Inde­pendent, Yinka Odumakin, National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, said the pres­ident should appear before the lawmakers in order to give Nigerians the true picture of things and steps being taken to stop mindless killings in the country.

“Definitely, he should ap­pear before the lawmakers. Except he is not the president of the country, that is why he should not honour the invita­tion. But if he is the President of Nigeria, he should honour it. The killings in the country is too much.

How can 110 people be killed in a day? And yet the spokesman of the president will be making useless state­ments, blaming the farmers for not obtaining military clearance before entering their farms. What respect do these people have for human blood? They don’t have respect for human lives anymore.

“If the president has scant regards for the lives of Nige­rians, he must honour the invitation and explain to the lawmakers what is going on. He is our commander-in-chief not our lamenter-in-chief.

“After the killings, he will be saying ‘I am shocked’, ‘I condemn it’. No, we don’t need to condemn killings. What are you doing to prevent further killings? He needs to go and tell the lawmakers”.

Also speaking, Tanko Yunusa, a former presidential candidate and National Con­sultative Front’s (NCF) Head of Public Affairs Bureau, said the president must hon­our the invitation and speak to the lawmakers who are the representatives of the people.

Definitely, he should ap­pear before the lawmakers. He needs to come and talk to Nigerians through their elected representatives on the steps he is taking to keep Nigeria secure. He should go and explain what is happen­ing as Nigerians have a right to know. Nigerians are not happy”, he said.

On his part, Prince Tony Momoh, one of the national leaders of APC, said while the lawmakers have a right to invite the president, it may be difficult for him to divulge important security informa­tion in public.

“They can invite anybody to explain but I don’t know how the president can come to them and start to explain se­curity issues to them in front of the camera. As the pres­ident, he gets briefing from service chiefs on the security situation. Will he now be re­vealing this in public glare?”

Also speaking, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN), who is a human rights lawyer, said the president must honour the invitation of the lawmakers to explain what he was doing about the security situation in the country which, according to him, had collapsed.

“The president should honour the invitation of the House of Representatives in order to explain to the nation what he is doing about the collapsed security of Nigeria.

“The situation has gotten out of hand such that we can no longer leave the matter with the president again.

“Security is everybody’s business, so we must all get involved through our elected representatives.

“It will be unconstitution­al for the president to ignore the invitation of the House as that will send a wrong signal of lack of empathy for the kill­ings going on across the land,” he said.

On his part, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, a former governor­ship aspirant and chieftain of the PDP, also threw his weight behind the call of the lawmak­ers, asking the president to honour the summons.

“Absolutely. It’s impera­tive. The president should, as a matter of urgency, in view of the sad security situation in the country appear physi­cally to address the House on the correct situation of things in the country.

“If the president can ad­dress and present his budget annually physically before both chambers of the Nation­al Assembly, what stops him from not appearing before them when summoned?

“Besides, it is constitution­al for him to do so and explain to the House, as they represent the entire country, on what he is doing on the safety of lives and property of Nigerians.”

Following the current state of insecurity in the North-East and other places in the country, the House of Representatives on Tuesday resolved to invite President Muhammadu Buhari.

This was as the House found itself in a rowdy ses­sion following attempts by the leadership to block a prayer in a motion which called for the invitation of the president.

The House Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, had earlier disallowed debates on the mo­tion moved by Hon. Ahmed Satomi calling attention to the wanton destruction of lives in the North Eastern state of Borno, which forced members to only suggest amendments to the prayers.

Satomi’s motion, moved on behalf of 10 others, was on the ‘Urgent Need to Condemn and Investigate the Insane Killing of Unarmed Farmers in Jere Local Government Area of Borno State’.

While calling on the House to condemn the dastardly act, the lawmaker, however, sub­stituted the original prayer to invite the president for ex­planations with “urging the president to declare a state of emergency on insecurity in the North-East and Nigeria”, whilst calling for a thorough investigation into the Satur­day massacre of over 43 farm­ers on rice field.

First to move for amend­ment was the Deputy Minori­ty Leader, Tobi Okechukwu, who called for an investiga­tion into the activities of the Defence Industrial Corpora­tion of Nigeria (DICON).

Okechukwu wanted the House to “mandate the Com­mittee on Defence to investi­gate DICON on its prepared­ness to manufacture weapons in the face of alleged interna­tional gang up against Nige­ria’s effort to tackle the Boko Haram insurgency”.

However, Hon. Ahmed Us­man Jaha, who said he was elected to the House from an IDP camp in Borno, moved a point of order on matters of privilege, saying that the mo­tion jointly moved by all Bor­no lawmakers in the House had been watered down as the prayer to invite the president for explanations on the state of security in Nigeria was no longer there.

He said: “Mr. Speaker, I rise to move on Order 6 Rule 1, Matter of Privilege, that I’m one of the core sponsors of this motion, as well as other members from Borno.

“And we all agreed that the prayers of this motion should remain. But when the member (Hon. Ahmed Satomi) read out the motion, I realised he left out one of the key prayers.

“There is a particular prayer where we said the president and heads of secu­rity agencies should come and explain to us why our people are still being killed despite trillions of budgetary alloca­tions and legislative support we have given.”

At this point, the speaker intervened, urging Jaha to allow the prayer for the presi­dent to declare a state of emer­gency on insecurity to stand instead of inviting him.

“This is an appeal from the chair that in a motion of this nature, it’s not all the time we allow ourselves to go all out and say we should invite the head of the executive to tell us what the security situation is.

“I very much understand the pain and the emotion and I share in it, but the prayer to declare state of emergency on insecurity, for me, has far more reaching implications and significance.

“That will go a long way to address the root cause of the matter, and I think we should explore that avenue instead,” Gbajabiamila pleaded.

But Hon. Jaha stood his ground, saying that “the prayer is not mine as an indi­vidual”.

He added: “My colleagues from Borno are seated here; let them say that I’m lying, that we did not agree to leave the prayer as part of the res­olutions.

“I don’t want my people who elected me from an IDP camp to think that we are here bench-warming.

“Let me say it for the world to hear that we want the pres­ident to come and explain to this House why his security chiefs are not doing their jobs, because each time issues are raised, they said they lack ad­equate funds and equipment, but the president said he has given them all necessary sup­port to enable them carry out their duties, so we need expla­nations.

“I’ve said it, let the world know that it is the House that is rejecting the prayer.

“But my motion is that Mr. President should be invited to come and explain the security situation in the country, espe­cially in the North-East.”

The point of order degen­erated into a rowdy session, forcing the speaker to dissolve the House into an executive session.

However, before then, the speaker expressed disappoint­ment at the attitude of mem­bers who were interrupting the House Leader, Alhassan Ado Doguwa, and Hon. Idris Koko, who all aligned with the motion as moved by Hon. Satomi.

“This must be said and I’m going to say it here on the floor. I’m a little bit disappointed to see that a lot of us are saying no, no, when some members were given the floor and were talking over a matter that bor­ders on national security.

“This House, from the be­ginning, has never been divid­ed and I’m not going to allow that now.

“So, I move that we dissolve into an executive session right now to resolve this issue,” Gbajabiamila ruled.

After about an hour, the House reverted to plenary where Hon. Jaha was asked to formally move an amend­ment to the motion inviting the president to appear be­fore the House to brief it on the state of security in the country.

Similarly, the upper cham­ber of the National Assembly on Tuesday slammed Presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari’s government over the killing of farmers in Borno State and other parts of the country.

Lamenting the high rate of killings in the country by Boko Haram, the lawmakers said that any government which failed to protect the lives of the people had lost its legitimacy and breach Sec­tion 14 (1) of the constitution.

The Senate also said that it would assess the performance of the military and probe its budget to know if the funds allocated to it to fight insecu­rity was judiciously utilised.

Lamenting the failure of government to guarantee safety of lives and the inabil­ity of the authorities to end the state of insecurity in the country, the lawmakers took turn to condemn the activi­ties of criminals who unleash mayhem on defenceless citi­zens across the country, espe­cially in the North-East.

The lawmakers, who ex­pressed their minds while contributing to a motion sponsored by Senator Kashim Shettima (APC, Borno Cen­tral), added that if President Buhari insisted on retaining the service chiefs, the logical conclusion would be that Mr. President had failed in his assignment of securing the nation.

In their resolutions, the lawmakers urged President Buhari to immediately initi­ate a transitional process of phasing out the current over-stayed security chiefs and re­placing them with new ones with new ideas and solutions.

The Senate urged the pres­ident to take immediate steps to restructure, remode, and revamp the country’s entire security architecture and pro­vide enough state-of-the-art weapons and equipment to effectively combat the bellig­erent power of the insurgents.

The upper chamber also urged the president to im­mediately initiate a probe into widespread allegations of corruption and leakages within the security structure and put mechanisms in place to foster transparency and en­sure all resources meant and deployed for security were actually spent on the needs on the ground.

They further impressed on the Federal Government the need to aggressively explore multilateral and bilateral options of partnership with the neighbouring nations of Chad, Niger, and Camer­oons towards reviving and strengthening the Multina­tional Joint Task Force and finding a lasting solution to the scourge of insurgency in the Lake Chad region.

The Senate asked the Fed­eral Government to, as a mat­ter of urgency, recruit at least 10,000 Civilian JTF, versatile with the local terrain in Bor­no, as agro-rangers under the aegis of the NCDSC to com­plement the efforts of the Nigerian Armed Forces and, coming under order 42 and 45 of the Senate rules, Shettima lamented that 2,801 attacks had been carried out between January and November this year in the state.

In his motion titled, ‘Be­heading of 67 Farmers in Borno by Boko Haram Insur­gents: Need for Urgent Deci­sive Action’, the lawmaker disclosed that about 40,000 people, mostly unarmed ci­vilians, had been brutally murdered.

He said 2.5 million people had been displaced from their homes and farms, property worth trillions of naira wan­tonly destroyed, and over 7 million people – mostly wom­en and children – plunged into dire humanitarian needs.

He said: “Over the week­end, Boko Haram insurgent members beheaded 67 farm­ers who had gone to a rice plantation at Kwashabe vil­lage in Zabarmari District of Jere Local Government Area, 20 kilometres north of Maidu­guri, the Borno State capital, to harvest ripe farm produce and destroyed the farm.

“This attack is one of the major attacks perpetrated by this devilish group in addi­tion to the February attack in Auno that killed 40 people, the assault in Foduma Koloram village of Gubio that killed almost 100 civilians in last June, while another attack in Usman Lawanti left another 40 dead.

“Last month, Boko Haram fighters killed 22 farmers working on irrigation fields near Maiduguri in two sepa­rate incidents.

“More than 67 citizens were beheaded while they were working in their farm­land without any form of re­sistance or challenge from the security agencies stationed a few kilometres away.

“The Nigerian military, in conjunction with other se­curity agencies, up till today have not been able to quell the insurgency affecting the region despite the slogan by government officials that the insurgents had been technical­ly defeated.”

He said that whatever it was that the present security chiefs were doing was not working or at least not enough.

He added: “If the presi­dent insists that the security chiefs are doing their work well, then the logical impli­cation of such assumption is that the president himself, as the constitutional command­er-in-chief of the country, has failed in his most rudimenta­ry assignment of securing the nation. I hope the latter is not the case.”

In his contribution, Senator Ahmed Baba Keita lamented that the killing was one too many, adding that the time for truth had come.

“The situation in the North-East can’t be allowed to continue,” he said, describing the statement from President Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, as irresponsible and insensitive.

Taking on the activities of the military in the fight against Boko Haram, the lawmaker said: “We have to sit down and reassess their (military) performance in the North-East. If we allow this to go, let us be ready for more mourning.

“Buhari is doing his best but his best is not enough. It is no longer about money because the money we have pumped in is enough for re­sults to be seen.

“We should investigate the funding for the military and we should no more give them money until we are sure that they spent what we had given them.”

Senator Ali Ndume, on his part, also lamented that reports of insecurity had not been implemented, insisting that the Senate needed to move further to save the na­tion.

He further lamented that soldiers at the war front shared ammunition, noting that the soldiers were not well-kitted and without new weapons.

Ndume insisted that if the government was serious in the fight against insurgency, in six months or less, Boko Haram would be defeated.

He disclosed how about 1000 Chadian soldiers wanted to assist the Nigerian govern­ment in the fight against Boko Haram, but decided to leave because the government was not serious about the collabo­ration.

He quoted Section 14 (1a and b) of the constitution to explain the role government ought to play in the lives of the citizens.

In his remarks, the Pres­ident of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, who presided over the plenary, said: “This is sup­posed to be a turning point for insecurity in Nigeria.

“Enough of excuses. Peo­ple who have nothing to offer should be shown the way out. Security should take centre stage.

“The Senate will do ev­erything to ensure that these resolutions are respected and implemented.”