We feel your pains, Senate tells Nigerians

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, and Legal Matters, Mohammed Monguno, on Monday said the National Assembly was concerned and shared the citizens’ distress over the current security challenges in the country.

The senator who decried the situation noted that the security sector had a huge allocation in the 2024 appropriation act to enable the various security agencies to deliver on their mandate of protecting lives and properties.

Despite allocating N3.25trn for national security out of the total N28.7trn budget, insecurity continues to persist in various regions of the country.

According to a Civil Society Organisation, Enough is Enough, there were approximately 245 reported kidnapping cases with over N6bn ransoms demanded by kidnappers in January 2024.

Speaking at a stakeholders’ dialogue on the State of Human Rights in Nigeria, organised by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre in Abuja on Monday, Monguno said the primary responsibility of the government is to provide adequate security to the citizens, adding that to address the insecurity in the country, the National Assembly allocated a large percentage of the budget to the security sector.

He said, “I want to assure you that the 10th National Assembly is a very responsible and responsive assembly to the yearnings and aspirations of the people. We feel the pains of Nigerians that we are representing as a result of the problem of insecurity in the country.

“And the Senate, in order to address this problem in the 2024 Appropriations Act, has made robust provisions to the security sector because the security sector got the highest amount of allocation because the National Assembly is desirous of giving all the wherewithal and the necessary input for them to be able to discharge their constitutional mandate of protecting the lives and properties of Nigeria to grantee peace order and good governance.

“Security is the primary responsibility of government. And that is the social contract that the government has with the people. That is the primacy of governance and because of that, the National Assembly appropriated the highest amount of money to the security sector.”

Monguno, however, vowed that the national assembly would intensify its oversight functions to ensure the judicious utilization of the funds.