‘Look beyond partisan consideration to tackle insecurity’

Chairman, Senate Committee on Co-operation and Integration in Africa/NEPAD, Chimaroke Nnamani, has urged Nigerians to look beyond partisan consideration and narrow sentiments to evolve workable solutions to the intractable security challenges in the country.

Nnamani, who is also a former governor of Enugu State, said instead of fixating on the symptoms, all hands should be on deck to tackle the causative factors behind banditry, kidnapping, killings and heedless rage in the society.

In an interaction with The Guardian, the medical doctor-turned politician said that things had fallen apart such that the centre could no longer hold it back, stressing that there are four discernible causes of the ugly situation Nigeria currently found itself.

He stated: “There is a huge gap crisis where massive inequality exists. Many are poor and few are rich. This presents a worrisome contradiction in the system and frustration among the poor.

“Next is a failed expectation framework. Things are not adding up based on expectations of the people from the government and what the government can provide by way of solutions. The constitution stipulates in Section 14 (2b) that the primary responsibility of the government is the security and welfare of the people.

“The question is how far has the government been able to provide this minimum need for the people? The general impression among Nigerians is that the government has indeed failed the people.

“Then, you talk about lack of critical infrastructure. There is real poverty in the country. Imagine a situation where you have 16 million children on the street with 14 million in northern Nigeria alone. This gives room for resistance and discontent. What are they supposed to do and where are they going to go?”

The second–term senator disclosed that what we have “is a disease, whether it is banditry, kidnapping, hunger, children dying from diarrhea, mothers dying from child birth, people dying from malaria, it is a social condition that is untenable.”

He said that the Senate is doing all within its constitutional limitations to help the country find a way out of the general morass, stressing that as the conscience of government, the legislature is always there to provide the raw materials for government to serve the people.

“What we have is a presidential system of government patterned after the United States (U.S.) template.

“So, what we need do is to sit down and have a laundry list of our problems and laundry solutions, back it up with the law and get the executive to do it. If they do not do it, we will use the veto power to override and implement it. We need to start now because no one can escape it,” he stated.