Senator call’s for adequate funding of security agencies

The Senator representing Cross River South Senatorial district, Gershom Bassey has called for adequate funding of the country’s security agencies to enhance all round development of Nigeria.

Bassey gave the advice at an interractive session with journalists.

“I think there is one area that we must address as a nation if we want to go forward in securing our nation whether it is external security from external aggression or criminality within our nation. I think that is the issue of funding and budgeting,” he said.

“Recently, I had interacted with lots of security agencies because of the happenings in my state and it has become very clear to me that a lot of our security agencies are not adequately funded. This is an area that we as Senate and National Assembly can look into. I know that we have the Police Trust Fund and others but it still appears that we do not have enough funding particularly for our security agencies. I do not want to go into details,” the Senator said.

On the way forward, Bassey said: “I think one thing we have to put together may be a committee or a standing committees to look into the adequate funding of these agencies so that they can meet up with the pressure we put on them.

“The second issue is recruitment of sufficient personnel. We know that there is a problem at the moment with police recruitment but we need to have adequate funding in order to meet up with the pressure we put on our agencies. We are under-policed and under-secure and it is very clear if we do not have enough security agents to secure the population then you do not have security and you will have security issues. If you do not have enough equipment to secure our population, then you will have security issues”.

Bassey therefore, urged the National Assembly to look into the issue of funding of the security agencies particularly the internal security agencies.

On the second phase of #EndSARS protest, he cautioned that the protesters must operate within the ambit of the law.

“The #EndSARS when they started at the beginning, it was welcomed because we believed that it was the constitutional right of Nigerians to voice their opinion, but the #EndSARS some how lost control of the peaceful dimension of that movement and I think that is what is creating the so-called scepticism about the protest,” he said.