Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan at the weekend in Abuja identified international politics as the major challenge hindering Nigeria’s successful fight against all forms of insecurity.
This, Lawan specifically noted during an interview session ahead of the first anniversary of the 9th Senate, has been slowing down efforts aimed at acquiring sophisticated machineries needed by the security agencies to deal with the situation.
The Senate President explained that efforts to buy equipment for the Nigerian Armed Forces are usually frustrated by international politics with the requests taking longer than expected unlike when another country makes similar requests from some foreign governments.
He stressed that the country’s security system is currently over stretched with more resources needed to tackle insecurity declared ”to some extent we are suffering from international politics, I know that in our efforts to try to buy spare parts for their jets, may be write to a certain foreign government and it will take six to nine months while another country will write to the same government and maybe get it in one or two months.”
“So something is not right, but that’s to say that it’s now one of our challenges that we will continue to engage with countries that we feel don’t understand what we are doing here.
”Also, we need more resources for the security. By resources, I don’t mean just money, we need more personnel for the Armed Forces, we need more personnel for the Police, Nigerian Immigration Service and almost all the agencies and paramilitary as well.
“And then of course, the resources in terms of equipments, machinery and then training. But what we experience today is we don’t have sufficient personnel, the resources available to security office are inadequate. Government is doing a lot to get more resources in terms of equipments and machinery,” he stressed.
Speaking on avoiding breach of powers between the executive and the legislature, Lawan said there must be mutual respect between the three arms of government.
According to him, the National Assembly or the legislature should not succumb to the desires of the Executive but rather they should cooperate.
His words: ”The principle of separation of powers is what establishes and sustains the government especially in democracies that believe in that. I believe in it strongly, the legislature should always be there to provide the legislative intervention, but here I also believe that separation of powers should always be considered alongside checks and balances, that’s what made the separation of powers more effective in terms of ensuring that there’s good governance.”
”That’s to say that there’s absolute application of the legislative interventions of parliament and particularly when it comes to checks and balances you will be looking at how the parliament oversights the executive arm of government so that it prevents or stop possible recklessness. That’s what we are doing and it’s something we fought for since when we came to fourth session of the National Assembly.”
Shedding more light on the executive, legislature relationship, the Senate President revealed that in order to sustain the relationship that enhances their productivity, the two arms of government have constituted a special joint committee, that works behind the scene towards ensuring effective and efficient consideration of some legislations.
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