President Muhammadu Buhari met with Senate President Ahmad Lawan on Sunday in Abuja.
Lawan said the meeting dwelled on the nation’s security situation as well as the crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In an interview with State House correspondents, Lawan reiterated the determination of the National Assembly to empower the security agencies in addressing security challenges across the country.
He also stressed the need to provide more funds to the nation’s security sector, to recruit additional personnel for successful execution of their mandates.
”You know the country is facing very deep and serious security challenges and I have come to discuss with Mr president what we discussed previously, that we should do whatever it takes to improve the security situation in the country.
”We believe that the senate and indeed the National Assembly is positively disposed to receiving even supplementary budget purposely to address the fundamental needs of the security agencies of our country.
”This is to enable them to fight the Boko Haram in the North East, banditry and other security challenges across the country.
”Secondly, in the senate, we believe we need to provide more resources for recruitment by the security agencies like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, immigration, and the paramilitary generally.
”We need to have more manpower or personnel and this is not something you get on platter of gold. Whoever wants to make an omelette will break an egg,” he said.
According to him, Section 14 subsection 2b of the Constitution of the Nigeria is very categorical and crystal clear, that the purpose of government shall be to provide for security and welfare of the people.
The senate president, therefore, maintained that the government has no option other than to address the security challenges more than any other thing.
”We provided for N500 billion intervention for COVID for the revised budget, and various agencies, the CBN, the NNPC and the IOCs provided for palliatives and some kind of interventions for the COVID challenge.
”I think we must tell ourselves the truth, that the security situation in the country, especially in the northern part of the country, requires that we give much more resources to the security agencies.
”And those who are heading these agencies, especially the service chiefs, must sit up, in fact we must have milestones and timelines on how we are going to deal with this.
”We cannot just go on without any time frame for dealing with these issues.
”If after we provide some support and someone is found short of expectations, he should be shown the way out if he refuses to go because the lives of Nigerians are so precious and therefore must be more important than any other considerations or sentiments.
”I believe that today, the most essential thing in government is to address the security challenges.”
