A Human rights activist and constitutional lawyer, Chief Femi Falana, has described the call for national security summit by Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, as completely escapist and diversionary.
Falana said that not too long ago, a former president regularly convened security meetings to address the security challenges facing the country when he was in power and yet, the country witnessed the highest rate of politically motivated killings in the history of the country under his watch because the recommendations of the security summits were never implemented.
Recalls that on February 8, 2018, the Senate convened a well-attended national security summit in Abuja, in which the executive branch of the federal government participated. And incidentally, Senator Ahmed Lawan was the chairman of the Ad Hoc committee set up by the Senate to review the security situation in the country and the committee submitted a report with far reaching recommendations, but apart from the enactment of the Police Security Fund, other recommendations of the committee have not been implemented. He observed that again on June 8, 2019, the executive convened a security summit attended by the president, vice president, the 36 state governors and service chiefs, to review the security situation in the country and the resolutions of the summit have not been implemented.
“Therefore, instead of calling for the setting up of another security summit, the Senate, under the leadership of Senator Lawan, should implement the resolutions of the Senate and the recommendations of the executive on national security.
‘‘Notwithstanding that section 214 of the Constitution provides that there shall be one police force in Nigeria, the National Assembly enacted the Security and Civil Defence Corps Act in 2003 and thereby established another police force. In addition, the operatives of the graft agencies, customs, prisons, federal road safety corps etc., have been authorised to bear arms by a Presidency that is opposed to state police.”
‘‘Therefore, the National Assembly should end the official hypocrisy by ensuring that the Constitution is amended to allow each government to establish a state police service to secure the life and property of the Nigerian people.
‘‘As a matter of urgency, the National Assembly should appropriate a special security fund for the recruitment and training of police personnel without any further delay,” he advised.