Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, on Wednesday stirred the hornets nest with a call on President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC) to resign over their inability to protect the lives and property of Nigerians.
He also said it was time to stone the President and his party for failing to live up to their election campaign promises.
Abaribe, made the call while contributing to a motion on “Nigerian security challenges: Urgent need to restructure, review and reorganize the current security architecture,” raised by Senate Majority Leader, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi.
Abaribe said, “When I was coming this morning, I saw the newspaper headlines; ‘Mr president, Commander- in- Chief expresses shock at the level of violent crime.’
“In other words, Mr. President was expressing surprise. But in accordance to our Rule 53(13), I will not go into that, but I will only say, Mr. President (of the Senate), in pidgin English, this surprise, surprised me.
“You have told us that on this solemn day that we are discussing this matter; that we may not at any point be partisan and I want to tell you Mr President, if you didn’t insist that we should not be partisan, I would have called out the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina.
“Adesina, who, when the Christian Association of Nigeria leaders complained about the killing of a priest, 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 somebody is complaining about these incessant deaths in this country.
“We have to get to the root of this matter. I can only say one thing, those who live on propaganda will die by propaganda. It is a matter of life and death.
“Everything 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 and preferred to cover the eyes of Nigerians with propaganda.
“All the time that we wasted in Nigeria trying to find all these excuses for non- performance has now come to stare us in the face.
“Reality is no respecter of persons. It is that reality we are facing now. Senator Sani Musa is shouting every day his people are being killed in Niger. We just took one (a motion) from Jos; a student who was murdered in the full view of everybody with a pistol. Yet, we are being told that they (Boko Haram terrorists) have been defeated.
“Nigerians did not elect the Inspector General of Police. We did not elect the Chief of Staff. We did not elect the service chiefs. We did not elect the National Security Adviser.
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“We elected the government of the APC in 2015 and reelected them in 2019. The reason we reelected them was that they continued to tell us they had a key to security.
“When you want to deal with a matter, you go with the head, so we will go with the government and ask this government to resign because they can no longer do anything.
“Yes, the 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 because they are no longer performing.”
At this point the upper chamber exploded into an uproar and Abaribe was stopped from speaking by Senate President Ahmad Lawan who cautioned contributors to be apolitical in their comments.
He said that bandits and Boko Haram insurgents do not operate on partisan grounds when they kill citizens.
Meanwhile, the motion was supported by 105 senators.
Abdullahi, in his lead debate, urged his colleagues to note the recent upsurge of security related challenges and the devastating loss of lives, limbs and properties that have accompanied it.
He also called on 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.”
He identified the security challenges as: Terrorism and violent extremism, armed banditry, kidnapping, militancy and separatist agitation.
Senator Betty Apiafi from Rivers State, led the call for the sack of the security chiefs, saying that they had outlived their usefulness.
Other Senators who spoke in favour of sacking the security chiefs who have been in office since 2015, included Rochas Okorocha, Matthew Urhoghide, Opeyemi Bamidele, Elisha Abbo, Adeola Olamilekan, Sani Musa, Gabriel Suswan and Emmanuel Bwacha.
