A week after passing the N9.120 trillion 2018 budget, the Senate has asked service chiefs and heads of para-military agencies to submit special funding requests within two weeks.
This followed a closed-door session on Wednesday, which lasted for over four hours.
Senate president, Bukola Saraki, who announced the resolutions at the end of the meeting, equally deliberated on the lack of coordination among security agencies as a key factor in the failure to quell the incessant killings and kidnappings.
Saraki said the Senate had resolved to accord priority to all bills that would strengthen the security architecture of Nigeria, saying the special funding requests would be in the form of a Supplementary Budget.
He, however, disclosed that the Supplementary Budget would be different from the $1 billion approved by the President to the military some weeks ago to tackle insecurity and release of $496 million to the United States government for the purchase of 12 Tucano aircraft.
He said: “The Senate in a closed session received briefs from the Chief of Defence Staff, the Director General of the Department of State Services, representatives of the Comptroller General of Immigration, Inspector General of Police and the Comptroller General of Customs on the proliferation of dangerous arms, spate of killings and kidnappings by hoodlums across the country.
“Thereafter, they answered questions from Senators bothering on security, insurgency, terrorism, kidnapping and other national security matters.
“On the whole, we decided that on our part, certain outstanding bills or protocols that needed to be fast-tracked, be addressed immediately to see that they are passed as soon as possible in order to strengthen the nation’s security architecture.
“Secondly, the Senate observed the issue of underfunding of security agencies and agreed that there is need for special funding for them to be able to carry out their mandates. Therefore, we gave the security chiefs two weeks to present their own budget on this area of special funding to the National Assembly, which we think will go a long way in improving the security situation in the country.
“Our great concern also was the issue of coordination among the security agencies and on this note, we resolved to find ways to strengthen that aspect of security through constitutional means.
“By and large, we all are committed to ensure that these unfortunate trend of killings are brought to end. We all agreed to continue to work very closely in order to address these issues of insecurity and we are confident that things will improve in this area.
“The Senate has its role to play and the security agencies are also committed to play their own role. We hope that over the next couple of weeks, we will begin to take action on some of these things for which we have made commitments.”
Those at the security briefing include: the Chief of Defence Staff, Abayomi Olonisakin, who stood in on behalf of service chiefs as well as director-general, State Security Services, Lawal Daura.
Others are representatives of Inspector General of Police; National Security Adviser; Comptroller General, Nigerian Customs Service; Comptroller General, Nigerian Immigration Service.
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