Gemade wants overhaul of nation’s security architecture

Civil Defence boss tasks officers on cooperation, dedication

The senator representing Benue North East in the National Assembly, Barnabas Gemade, has called for the overhaul of the nation’s security architecture, citing a fundamental dislocation in the entire system.

In an interview with The Guardian in Makurdi, the former national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) maintained that the current state of the security agencies manifests incapacity to tackle the prevailing insecurity in the country.

He submitted that the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, lacked the maturity for the revered position considering his dispositions and responses to issues of national security. 

His words: “There is a fundamental problem, a dislocation in the security system in the nation and something must be urgently done to change the situation.“We need an overhaul of the basic security organisation in the country, which is the police. “When you hear the Inspector General speaks, you know clearly that the organisation is not in position to do what it is supposed to do.

“This is because an Inspector General of Police should be more mature than the one who is there now. It is very clear to everybody because when he hears about a problem, he goes on the national television without going there to see what it is before commenting. That is unprofessional.” 

The two-term lawmaker said the military that ought to protect the nation’s borders had shirked its responsibility, making illegal immigrants to invade the country and wreck havoc.He explained that the military was established to protect lives and property against external aggression, adding that a part of his constituency has been subjected to attacks by herdsmen claimed to be foreigners.  

Meanwhile, the Commandant General (CG) of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Abdullahi Gana Muhammadu, has charged his officers to cooperate with other security in the clampdown on perpetrators of heinous crimes in the North East.

He stressed that the deployed personnel in Borno State were to protect and assist returnees in their liberated communities once ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency in the region.

The CG, who has since relocated his office to the zone on the order of the Minister of the Interior, Lt.-Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau (rtd) following the abduction of the Dapchi school girls in Yobe State, enjoined his men to be resolute, committed, loyal and dedicated.