TheCable

Enyinnaya Abaribe, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator from Abia state, has taunted President Muhammadu Buhari by asking him to take responsibility for just “one thing”.

He said this on Thursday while contributing to a debate on a motion sponsored by Attai Aidoko, senator representing Kogi east.

While moving the motion, Aidoko said suspected herdsmen invaded some villages in his constituency and killed 30 people on Wednesday.

Abaribe lamented that killings in the country had become an everyday occurrence.

The Abia senator wondered if the executive has taken responsibility for the attacks across the country.

“The commander-in-chief of Nigeria is in charge of security and when the commander-in-chief says I don’t know what happened, then we have to worry if our security is actually in the right hands,” he said.

“But let us go from there and also bring to the fore another aspect which the senate leader mentioned. He said the security forces are overstretched. We agree but distinguished Senator Marafa told us here that information was given to the same security people, the governor was dancing ‘arambakoso’ somewhere else and left state’s security. Is that not what you said?

“It is not a question of having enough people, it is a question of not acting on the intelligence that you have. I can’t blame them for actions because the president says I don’t know. So, Mr President, let us beg this president to take responsibility for one thing; it’s not everything that you don’t know. We need to be safe in Nigeria.”

On his part, Dino Melaye, senator representing Kogi west, said the issue of insecurity in the country is still being treated with kid gloves.

“We have not shown the needed efforts to combat this problem. We are still treating the issue of security with kid gloves. If you see the gory pictures of people that are maimed – if we cannot show capacity, do we want to continue complaining?” he asked.

“It is the poor that is dying. Let us for once call on Mr President, call on governors of these respective states who are the chief security officers of those states.”

Thereafter, the senate urged Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general of police (IGP), to arrest those behind the killings.

The upper legislative chamber also asked Buhari to direct the army to move into troubled spots.