The House of Representatives has submitted to President Muhamamdu Buhari the report of its security summit held in May this year.
Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila presented the report on Tuesday, at the Presidential villa, Abuja.
Addressing State House Correspondents thereafter, the Speaker said both the executive and legislative arms of government have been assigned specific roles to help address insecurity in the country.
“As you are aware, we went through a painstaking effort for four-five days and the report came out and we divided it into both legislative and executive recommendations.
“As we said from day one, we will bring the report to the President for action on the recommendations and he has graciously accepted and we are hopeful and believe that many of the recommendations; both the legislative and executive, once implemented, will go a long way into resolving some of the issues that pervade our society in terms of security, if not all.
“And what led to the resolution of the summit was because we felt that it was time that we thought outside the box; that we begin to look at issues in a different way as opposed to the traditional ways and that is exactly what we did,” he said.
Shedding more light, Femi Gbajabiamila said if the two arms of government implement fully the recommendations contained in the report, the problem would be fully addressed.
He also said the House recommended the establishment of development commissions across the six geo-political zones of the country, to help address problems caused by insecurity.
He said: “The legislature has about seven recommendations and the executive recommendations are about 19 in all. There are overlapping mandates for instance between the security agencies, which brings confusion on their lines of reporting and those overlapping mandates will be addressed by the House. We have already introduced bills to that effect.
“There are several recommendations; we’ve agreed to establish zonal commissions in all the zones like the North East Development Commission. We’ll have the Southwest, we’ll have the South-South, we’ll have the Southeast, we’ll have the Northwest, and that goes a long way in resolving issues, regional and zonal issues.
“Everybody must be involved and that’s what Mr. President brought us here today. He brought his whole security team and to me that gives me inspiration. It gives the leadership inspiration. We believe that that alone is a sign of good faith.”
The Speaker explained that at the summit, experts and all stakeholders were invited and they gave useful suggestions that formed part of the recommendations.
Present at the report presentation were Ministers of Defence and Interior, as well as Service Chiefs and Heads of other security agencies.
Emmanuel Ukoh
