The Presidential hopefuls for the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore; Action Democratic Party, Yabagi Sani; Social Democratic Party, Adewole Adebayo; and the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Mr. Peter Umeadi, on Sunday night, pledged to restructure the security system to address the nation’s insecurity.
Along with focusing on the growth of the education sector, they also committed to uphold the law and end poverty.
These were said by the candidates at the Arisetv town hall for presidential candidates in Abuja.
The Center for Democracy and Development, along with a number of media outlets, helped organize the debate.
Sowore said his administration would combat banditry if it won the 2023 election and noted that doing so was not difficult if smart people were in control of the security services. He claimed that the intelligence agencies were not doing enough in the area of gathering intelligence.
The ACC candidate claimed that not enough was being done by the Department of State Services to address the country’s security crisis.
He said, “I was detained by the DSS for five months. They were there watching BBNaija (reality tv show) instead of collating intelligence, analysing and using that to stop terrorists and bandits. We don’t have a commander-in-Chief of the armed forces as of today. What we have is an arranged system of security in which everybody is doing what he likes. That’s one aspect of it.
The AAC Presidential candidate also urged the Nigerian government to resolve the issue of hunger and poverty before deploying guns to stop insecurity.
On his part, the ADP standard bearer, Sani alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari was presiding over a corrupt government, noting that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited was the linchpin of the graft in the country.
In the event that he or she is elected, Sani promised that no one would be above the law because “corruption will be dealt with, consequently eliminating poverty and improving the country’s security condition.”
He said, “Take for instance, our security outfits today. Unfortunately, it is lopsided in terms of the leadership that you have in dispute. So, as the next president, I will govern with rule of law and that means that nobody would be above the law.
Sani continued by saying that fighting corruption was necessary to advance the economy in the fields of information technology, climate change, and energy revolution.
Adebayo, the SDP candidate, cautioned politicians against involving the security services in their political conflicts and added that the persistent threat to national security stemmed from the absence of an effective security architecture.
At the Presidential debate, Adebayo noted that the nation had made a number of oversights in terms of public safety.
He stated, “We must stop using security to fight political battles. First as Commander-in-Chief, I am the one to bring you the notice of violation to the people; I’m in charge of security for God’s sake. The first thing we need to know is that the political elites are very good with scare- mongering.
“What we need to understand is that the insecurity in this country stays and starts from the (Presidential) villa by everything you see outside if you put a proper Commander-in-Chief in place, and they’re not using security as a way to compensate people. They’re managing security architecture. Well, what we’ll call big crimes that are very minimal.”
If elected President in 2023 by the APGA, Umeadi promised to be actively involved in the affairs of the nation.
Umeadi questioned why the President would choose to delegate authority over participating in the job.
He noted, “If I’m President, I’ll infuse myself into the work, and get things done directly. It’s about discipline, structure of security, but most importantly, it’s about leadership. A president has to be in direct contact with all that is happening in the country.”
He continued by saying that it was improper for individuals to constantly assign blame in Nigeria and that it was more inappropriate for a commander-in-chief of the armed forces to do so.
“As a Commander-in-Chief, I want results. I do not know why a policeman would run away from an armed robber; the armed robber should not be more or better armed than the police.
“These are the issues, hence we have to make sure that the state prevails. We need to tackle security squarely by being sincere,’’ he stated.
