Stormy session as Senator demands Buhari’s resignation, stoning of APC politicians over rising insecurity

A debate on the worsening security situation in the country led to fireworks in the Senate on Wednesday.

The session became rowdy following a call by the Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, on President Muhammadu Buhari to resign over his inability to safeguard the lives and property of Nigerians since 2015.

The Senators were however divided on the necessity of adopting a state police model in the country.

However, they were unanimous on the urgent needs for the President to sack the present Service Chiefs.

Abaribe insisted that Buhari and the All Progressives Congress(APC) had told Nigerians during their electioneering campaigns to stone them if they fail to perform.

He said: “it is now time to pick stones to stone them” in view of their obvious failure.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan cut Abaribe short.

He called on him and all those who were going to contribute to the debate to be apolitical.

He said that bandits and Boko Haram insurgents do not operate on partisan grounds when they kill citizens.

Abaribe said: “When I was coming this morning, I saw a newspaper headline of THISDAY, which said: the ‘Commander-In-Chief expresses shock at the level of violent crimes’ in the country.

“In other words, Mr President was expressing surprise but in accordance to our rules in Order 53 (13), I will not go into that but I can only say in pidgin English ‘this surprise, surprise me.’

“Mr. President, you have told us that on this solemn day and in discussing this matter, that we may not at any point be partisan.

“I want to say Mr. President, if you didn’t insist that we will not be partisan, I would have called out the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who when the CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) leaders complained about the killing of a priest, he turned around and said CAN was acting like a political party.

“Now that we are talking about it here, let me hear him say that all of us are acting like a political party when many are complaining about these incessant deaths in this country.

“Because we have to get to the root of this matter, I can only say one thing: those who live by propaganda will die by propaganda.

“This is a matter of life and death and I was building up to something and I will say what I was building up to simply.

“Boko Haram has been defeated, Nigeria is now safer, everything that was being done to make sure that the hard work that was supposed to be done in securing Nigeria was not done because certain people did not do their work but preferred to cover the eyes of Nigerians with propaganda and trying to find all these excuses for non-performance have now come to stare us in the face.

“Mr President, Nigerians did not elect the Inspector General of Police, we did not elect the Chief of Staff, we did not elect the Joint Chiefs or the National Security Adviser.

“We elected the government of APC in 2015 and re-elected them in 2019. The reason we re-elected them is that they continued to tell us that they had the key to security.

“When you want to deal with a matter, you go to the head, so we will go to government and ask this government to resign because they can no longer do anything.”

At this point Lawan intervened and cautioned Abaribe not to be partisan in his contribution.

“Let me remind you once again that Nigerians voted for APC in 2015 and because they saw improvement in their lives they voted APC again in 2019. I don’t want to be partisan and I would advise against hate speech,” Lawan said.

On his part, Abaribe added: “In conclusion, I want to say that Nigerians voted a government into power and that government even said ‘if we don’t perform stone us’ we are going with the stones to stone them now…”

Again Lawan stopped Abaribe and said he has exhausted the allotted time to make his contribution.

Lawan added: “The situation in this country is such a serious situation that our debate should be towards ensuring that we are able to get solutions.”

In his contribution, Senator Abudullahi Adamu took exception to Abaribe’s call on President Buhari to resign.

Adamu insisted that the Senate President ought to have ruled that Abaribe should withdraw his submissions.

Adamu said: “There is no doubting the fact that we do face security challenges in this country.

“Anybody who says otherwise is only pretending but the fact that we have security challenges and the fact that we are in a democratic dispensation, and the fact that in the National Assembly, on the floor of this hallowed chamber, we enjoy some immunity.

“Mr President, if we do not approach this debate with the level of sensibility that it demands, we shall be doing more harm than good to this issue of national security.

“If we all stand up and talk about campaign pronouncements, manifestos presented by different parties, those accepted and those rejected, we will not have time to discuss what we are here to discuss.

“But for us to talk as if nothing is happening, it does not help the situation we are in. I believe that if government agencies have not been able to get us to the promised land, we should try to go into the nitty gritty of what their problems are.

“How do we help resolve what we have instead of outright condemnation and seeing nothing good and throwing the baby away with the bath water?

“The opening salvo by the Minority Leader where he landed and crash landed by saying he is going with stones.

“Stone in the spirit in which he made that contribution is a weapon. We cannot sit here as elder statesmen and be adding salt to injury.

“It is not within our duty to do so. I would have wished the Senate President did not to only tell the minority leader that the time allotted for the discussion was up but should have told him to withdraw the statement as a respect and that he is a man of honour to stand by the oath of office he took.”

Lawan had on Tuesday promised that the Senate would dedicate its plenary of yesterday (Wednesday) to debate the worsening security situation in the country and to proffer a way forward.

President Buhari had also on Tuesday expressed surprise about the growing violent crimes in the country and promised that his government would henceforth be harder on bandits.

Lawan had also said that the security architecture of the country is ineffective and fast deteriorating.

Senate Majority Leader, Senator Yahaya Abudullahi sponsored the motion titled: “Nigerian security challenges: Urgent need to restructure, review and reorganize the current security architecture.” The motion was co-sponsored by 105 other Senators.

Abdullahi, in his lead debate, called on his colleagues to note the recent upsurge of security related challenges and “the devastating loss of lives, limbs and properties that it unleashed on the nation.”

He further urged the Senate to note the comprehensive new National Security Strategy that the government unfolded in December, 2019, “with its very clear statement of goals, objectives and challenges that faced the nation particularly those challenges whose recent upsurge have a direct and devastating impact on the lives and safety of the people.”

The security challenges according to him, include: Terrorism and violent extremism, armed banditry, kidnapping, militancy and separatist agitation.

Others are Pastoralists/farmer clashes and cattle rustling; organized crime; piracy and sea robbery; and cross border crimes of smuggling and illegal drugs and fire arms trafficking.

He insisted that even though the Senate appreciates the recent effort to redefine the nation’s approaches to the security challenges, the “implementation strategy must be operationalized in a manner that takes a critical and intrusive review of the nature, structure and disposition of the security institutions, particularly the Police, Civil Defence, Intelligence, Customs, Immigrations, etc.”

Abdullahi added: “Further notes that the various local, state and regional responses to these security challenges by way of selfhelp initiative such as Civilian JTF, Hisbah, Yausakai, Yanbanga and more recently Amotekun which are mainly expression of peoples desperation and disappointment with the failure of the state security architecture to protect them;

“Opines that the current structure, operational strategies, Personnel training and disposition of these critical institutions has been outgrown by our contemporary security challenges.

“This is because, in the current challenging dispensation, we must prioritize the restructuring and the reorganizing those security apparatuses that shoulder the direct responsibilities of protecting the Nigerian people and their urban and rural space.

“This is with a view to making them more effective, responsive community integrated and people friendly.

“Far reaching measures and structural reforms are necessary in order to arrest the rapidly deteriorating internal security environment.

“The current challenges seem to have overwhelmed our security Institutions.”

The Senate, after five hours of debate, set up a 17-member Committee to interface with all heads of security agencies for a way out of the deteriorating security situation in the country and to report back in two weeks.

The ad hoc Committee is to be chaired by the Senate Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi. Members include Senators Enyinnaya Abaribe, Aliyu Sabi Abudullahi, Ali Ndume, Abba Moro, Yusuf Yusuf, Bala Ibn Na’Allah, Stella Oduah, Ibikunle Amosun, Ibrahim Gobir, George Sekibo, Sulaiman Kwari, Aliyu Wamakko and Haliru Dauda Jika among others.

The committee is also to engage the National Security Adviser on the implementation modalities of the December 2019 national security strategies.

The panel is also to engage the national security institution to discuss their operational structures, funding, equipment and staff disposition with a view to reviewing the national security architecture to make it more responsive in tackling the myriad security challenges facing the nation and the people.

Besides, it is to produce a draft implementation modality/blueprint on the ways and means of tackling the current security challenges for the consideration of the Senate.

The Senate also summoned to Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to brief it at plenary on the modus operandi of state policing in the country on Wednesday.

The upper chamber also called on Buhari to declare a national security emergency in the country.

Lawan in his contribution said the legislature must not shy away from what affect the people.

He said: “This is not something we can do alone, we must work with the executive to achieve these.

“The President himself has been working hard with security agencies to ensure that we protect the lives and property of our people but we have come to a point where the legislators will also intervene or we give the necessary legislation and support to the executive arm of Government.

“So what we have done is the first thing, I think the most difficult step is the next step and that is, we have passed resolution now, the list of the adhoc committee members.

“They will be charged to work assiduously to ensure that they finish their work in two weeks but that is the second step, the third step will be the implementation of whatever we are able to adopt from the ad-hoc committee support, in that case we have to work much more closely to ensure the implementation on those things we resolved on.

“We should prepare our minds that not all what we have resolved on would be implemented, we pray that whatever we resolve that will bring solution the executive may have their own solution on the way forward so there would be need for us to join and marry the two efforts to ensure that the lives of property of Nigerians are protected.”

In their contributions, Senators raised the issue of community policing and the over stay in office of the present Service Chiefs.

However, while senators where divided on the desirability of state police, those who spoke were unanimous on the need for the current Service Chiefs to be asked to proceed on their overdue retirement.

While the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege opposed state police, Senators Oluremi Tinubu, Solomon Adeola, Danjuma Goje, Adamu Aliero, Olubunmi Adetunmbi and Opeyemi Bamidele, among others, supported the creation of state police.

Omo-Agege said: “The current personnel strength of 300,000 to police about 200 million people and the constitutional structure of the Police Force, there is no way they can do this job.

“Assuming we decide to go the route of state police, we don’t want to create a Nigerian police and give it another name.

“If we create state police today, what are the challenges the police is facing that will not be faced by the community police.

“Now, we have State Governments who want to create State police. These are the same state government that are not able to pay salaries of workers.

“If we create the state police, we will go back to the Nigerian police and have the same challenges if not worse.

“We also have the misuse to which the state police could be deployed. All politics is local as we are told.

“There are some states where those challenges will not be present but there are also states where state police will be abused by the state governments and by the state Governors.”

Senator Adamu Aliero urged the Senate to revisit the report of its security summit during the eight Senate.

Aliero said: “If you recall, in the 8th Senate, we had one whole week where we had security summit.

“In that summit, we invited everybody that is supposed to be invited from service chiefs to traditional institutions.

“We came up with every good recommendations, I don’t know what happened to those recommendations.

“We should go back, adjust it and then send to the executive. All that is supposed to be said has been said at that seminar.

“On the issue of state police, we are putting the cart before the horse. For us to have state police, we have to amend the relevant sections in our constitution.”

On the other hand Senators Adeola, Elisha Abbo, Betty Apiafi, Matthew Urhoghide, among others called for the sack of the Service Chiefs.

Adeola said: “The Service Chiefs have done well. We thank them for what they have done. It is time for them to go.”

Senator Apiafi said: “Most of us we will agree that by the time they came into position, things were not really bad. They have done their bits and their tenure has expired. They are illegally occupying the seat. It will be good for the government to allow the security chiefs go and bring in new people to add vigour to the fight against security.”

On his part, Senator Urhoghide said: “These service chiefs have overstayed. If it is true that these service chiefs after we confirmed them over five years ago, they are still on the saddle, I have no apologies, they have done very well. They have overstayed their welcome and they are bereft of ideas. Others should come in.

The Service Chiefs include Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin, Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, Chief of Naval Staff, Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas and Chief of Air Staff, Sadique Abubakar.