Killings: Sack Security Chiefs Now – Saraki Tells Buhari

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has called for the sack of security chiefs to give way for others who can perform better.

Reacting to recent security challenges in the country, while visiting communities affected by rainstorm in Ilorin on Saturday, Mr Saraki cautioned against politicising the situation.

“This is not something to be politicised,” he said. “If somebody is not capable and cannot do what he has to do, let others have the opportunity to do it.”

Recently, the Amnesty International (AI) said at least 1,813 people have been killed from January 2018 to date. With killings spreading across 17 states, the worrying figure almost double the entire death toll of 2017.

AI also blamed Nigerian authorities for failing to tame the killings, noting that the failure of security agencies made attacks and reprisals frequent.

Mr Saraki, sharing similar thought, accused the security chiefs and agencies of failing to work together.

“We have had situations where security officials have told us there is poor coordination. One, A is not talking to B, Be is not talking to A. They don’t attend meetings jointly and things need to be done.

“Let us forget the issue of party, these are lives of people – and let’s remove politics. It is not about who is the Speaker of the House, who is the President of the Senate. It is about Nigeria.”

Mr Saraki said the National Assembly had anticipated the situation and issued advice but was ignored due to “politicisation of issues.”

He used the opportunity to revisit the Senate’s faceoff with the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.

“As you know, the National Assembly under my leadership, many months back, had seen this danger, called for a security summit, we had addressed the issue of security architecture. We had said that there is definitely a failure of the security architecture of the country,” the Senate President said.

“You are all very aware that some service chiefs decided in their own wisdom that there is no need for them to work with the National Assembly to address these issues.

“There is no society that continues to see the kind of killings here and think that it should be business as usual. It requires drastic action, it requires a collaboration of all agencies and all arms of government for us to be serious.”

Premium Times