TheCable

Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, says those criticising President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval of $1 billion for security funding are playing politics with the lives of Nigerians.

Dan-Ali, the minister of defence, had on Wednesday said President Buhari had granted assent for the release of the fund for the procurement of security equipment to fight insecurity.

Reacting to the criticisms trailing the approval, the special adviser on media and publicity to the president said it is “unfortunate” to attribute it to politics.

“As we speak now the communication to the national assembly is about ready, he said in an interview on Channels Television on Thursday.

“Those who have been flexing muscles over the matter should just have bothered to make inquiries from the senior special assistant to the President on national assembly matters.

“If they had inquired they would have been told that the communication would soon be on the way to the national assembly.

“Talking about the timing, there is no timing that is not good for security. Every time is security time. Those who are reading political meaning into it is just unfortunate they play politics with everything and they will play politics with the very lives of Nigerians, which is very bad.”

He dismissed the insinuation that the amount was too huge to be spent only on security matters, saying that no government could quantify the amount of funds being expended on security as no individual or government could quantify the value of human lives.

“It is not something that I think any government could begin to disclose. But we know that it is expensive. I remember that the chief of army staff spoke about some trillions of naira recently – security is expensive but human life is much, much expensive,” he said.