Reps tell service chiefs to end insecurity or resign

The House of Representatives on Tuesday told Nigeria’s service chiefs to urgently arrest the worsening insecurity in the country and what lawmakers described as a drift into anarchy, or resign.

The House declared that if the President Bola Tinubu-led administration proves fundamentally unable or unwilling to stop the daily tears of grieving citizens within a clear, specified timeframe, the Service Chiefs should honourably resign from office, having failed to fulfill the primary purpose of government as mandated by the Constitution.

The resolution followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by Ibe Osonwa, representing Arochukwu/Ohafia Federal Constituency who raised alarm over what he called the “perilous security situation” in several parts of Nigeria, where armed groups have intensified attacks on vulnerable communities, particularly schoolchildren and religious congregations.

The House noted that the fundamental constitutional obligation of the Federal Government of Nigeria as enshrined in Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which explicitly states that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”

It noted that the daily abduction of innocent schoolchildren has not only disrupted the educational fabric of the nation but has forced thousands of children out of school, compounding the country’s out-of-school children crisis and traumatising an entire generation of young Nigerians.

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The House further expressed concerns that despite the trillions of Naira allocated to the defence and security sectors in consecutive national budgets, the current security architecture appears overwhelmed, reactive, and incapable of halting the sophisticated operations of these bandits;

It further expressed concern over what it described as the apparent lack of a decisive, definitive, and crushing military response from the security agencies, a collapse in the enforcement of sovereign security, leaving citizens with the grim impression that the government has lost control of vast territories within the nation.

The House condemned in the strongest possible terms the ongoing banditry, the horrific daily abductions of Nigerian school children, and the persistent attacks on schools and churches across Nigeria.

The House appealed to the President, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, reminding him of his sacred oath of office to protect the lives and property of all Nigerians.

The House also demanded that the President immediately deploy an aggressive, unrelenting, and comprehensive security strategy to flush out bandits from their strongholds, secure all vulnerable schools and places of worship, and ensure the immediate, unconditional release of all citizens currently held in captivity.

It mandated its Committees on Defence, National Security and Intelligence, and Army to aggressively oversee the execution of this resolution and report back to the House within two weeks for further legislative action.