Buhari, Lawan meets over insecurity, state of nation

President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday, February 22, met with Senate President Ahmad Lawan where they deliberated on national issues including security challenges facing the country and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

Speaking to State House correspondents at the end of the closed doors meeting, the senate president described the deliberation as fruitful, saying Nigerians troubled areas would in the two months have their environment secured to enable them to engage in agricultural activities and other businesses.

According to him, the government cannot shy away from securing the environment in both rural and urban parts of the country.

“I have come to meet with President Buhari, to discuss the issue of security of our nation. And in fact, there is nothing more important today or more topical, than the security of Nigeria.

“We have discussed, we had a very extensive discussion on the security of all parts of Nigeria, and how we should go about improving the situation, we all have roles to play.

“Nobody would like to see the kind of thing that we experience in various parts of the country in the form of insecurity. As political leaders, we cannot shy away from that, we have to get our people secured, we have to secure the environment for them to earn the means of livelihood,’’ he said.

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Lawan commended the National Economic Council (NEC) for approving some funds from the Excess Crude Accounts (ECA) for the procurement of more sophisticated weapons and security gadgets for the armed forces.

He, therefore, expressed the hope that additional weapons when procured would go a long way in addressing security challenges across the country.

He said: “You recall that the National Economic Council approved of taking some funds from the excess crude accounts with a view to giving more sources to our armed forces.

“This is a commendable effort and we are ready to help with appropriation to ensure that we acquire those weapons for the armed forces to fight and end this insecurity in the North East, in the North West, in the South-South, and South West as well.

“We believe that this is also going to help empower and build the capacity of other security agencies like the police because the police need to be there.”

On recent utterances by some political actors attempting to promote ethnoreligious differences among peace-loving citizens, Lawan frowned at those politicians, saying such utterances were uncalled for.

“Recently, there have been a lot of arguments on what should happen, what should not, especially with regards to what political leaders would say or not supposed to say.”

On the ongoing forensic audit of the NDDC, the senate president stressed the need to sanction all those implicated in wrongdoings by the audit reports.

“I agree with President Buhari that we have to end the forensic audit to ensure that everything is done properly and the report is submitted to him.

“And here, it is very, very significant, that whoever is found culpable, should be treated as such, so that that will serve as a lesson and as a deterrent to others because NDDC should have transformed the Niger Delta into a better environment than what it has,” he said.