Senate Will Summon Wike Over Insecurity In Abuja, Says Senator Kingibe.

Actually tonight as the family of Nabiha and those who several people also who have lost people or who have their family members, brothers, sister in the kidnappers, then who thought the living in perhaps the most fortified place in Nigeria have had their family members abducted. Hearing now that this is in fact not a new scenario that is playing out in Abuja in Maitama, in the city centre, in Woosa area, in Otaku area of Abuja. This has been happening for over six months and people have been saying it and now it bothers the mind if the Senator representing the FCT has raised this issue before and nothing was done and wasn’t taken seriously. But until when things escalated, what does this mean anyways? I even took it up at the highest echelon of government because I know that these things are are really happening. I have lived in the FCT since 1988 and I can see how insecure it’s become. But there are certain issues we need to address that. Things like unemployment, empowerment, abandoned buildings all over the place, shanty towns coming up. And the solution to the shanty towns is not just demolishing them, because as soon as you demolish them they crop up again somewhere else. We need when we demolish them to create some sort of viable alternatives. Otherwise people, the people must find somewhere to live, no matter how far they are. They will make some other places Shanty Town and Pape. For months they’ve been complaining about insecurity. Katie around the way all those places and I can go on and on and on. But I must say part of the problem we are having. There’s a big disconnect between the minister of the FCT and the elected officials and I’ll be specific, the House of Rep member and myself. The truth of the matter is that the minister is new to the territory. We are the ones who have historical knowledge of the whole area and it is imperative that we work together. If we don’t work together, that’s what what is happening is exactly. Senator apologies. Does the minister listen to you as a senator, The politically elected person to represent? Does he listen to you? I’ve never met the Minister except when he came for appropriation. I have reached out to him several times. The Minister for some reason thinks Senator Aduda is still the Senator of the FCT. Unfortunately that’s not the case. So since I have, I was prepared that when I go back this time I’m going to bombard the Minister with letters, since obviously just talking to him on the phone, sending messages. I have WhatsApp messages. Everything I’ve sent to him, I’ve reaching one or two letters, I don’t get the response. And this is FCT is not. I’m the highest elected official in the FCT, accountable to the people of the FCT,How do you? Manage. To look. And therefore the person they bring their complaints to and the person I have to convey he is the Chief Security Officer of the Federal Territory and therefore the person in charge of security, and most accounts to the people and me as to why these things are not being resolved. I’ve also tried to sit with the Security Agency separately to ask what the issues are, and they properly found that they said yes they are and that they don’t like anything but that the the kidnappings are not true. But we are seeing, and I said that they are true and now that the whole territory is screaming insecurity, insecurity, insecurity, they can see that I wasn’t exaggerating and I was just not trying to harass them for no reason. So it’s not a case of that we do not know. It’s a case that you are the one for nobody. Listen, you are hinted that this is happening for authorities. Turned a blind eye to whatever was going on. That’s sad, isn’t it? Yes it is. It is the the the I I don’t know what the problem is. I think the minister of the FCC is coming from a different structure of a state where things are different. Other places there are three senators and there is a governor, but here it’s not that way. The there’s no governor. I am the person that the people will come to with their complaints. Everybody has been at me at how I’m not doing anything about the insecurity. Forgetting that is the minister who will do something about the insecurity and the minister as far as he’s concerned, there are no elected members in the FCT who. I mean it’s been good because they trust the Nigerian people haven’t elected officials in political office order is for them to be accountable to them and when that trust is breached or broken there is a sad sad feeling and the minds of people and this kind of disconnect does not does one thing it breaks down the society. But let’s look at it and let’s hoping that we’ll find a solution and last in one with what is happening. What, in your own view, Senator, do you think is the root cause? Suddenly, the city has become an insecure. Well, I think we should tackle it from many, many angles. For one thing, I think there should be, and I believe that it was the military that chased the kidnappers to the point of getting hold of them and handing to the police. Now the military’s primary job is not really police say, it should be that of the police. I think that the borders coming into the FCTFCT, Nasara, FCT, Kaduna, FCT, Niger, we need to have better monitoring of those borders because that’s how come the the the the miscreants and the terrorists and the bandits come from all those places, number one. Number two, we need also IDP camps that are located in the city centre. IDP camps should be, they should be deliberate places built with perimeter fence and accesses and therefore we need to look at that as a major way. Because I’ve been told that lots of times the miscreants they run into the the camps and it’s difficult to follow because the the you know how the camps are. Secondly, there are so many with the poverty level. So many.
Actually seen some of them and we also need to look at the the Agro Rangers who are supposed to be there, but I’ve never seen any of them. They’re part of the NSTC. So these, they’re all these arms of the security agencies. We need to see how they can be optimized because right now a lot of police people and are guarding VIPs, they’re not unavailable for community work and policing the streets of Abuja. If in places like DJ, people Maraba, all those, how many policemen are there? Let’s look. At Senator, yeah, you hear most of the cases of people that have experienced ritual related kidnap in the city of Abuja, Those who are returning from work or coming, going to work in the morning. And these are a lot of the time in within the city center and these are going through transportation, public transportation within the city. That is also a major worry for a lot of people who are low income earners. I would think that their lives are under threat. So for those, we need more community policing and and as I said, we need more security within and not the usual checkpoints that they dismantle by 10:00. Everybody’s the checkpoints are off. We need them within the community. We also need to have a mechanism where people can give information to the security agencies anonymously because a lot of them know things but are afraid to come and tell you what’s happening in their community. There has to be a way for that to happen. So those I I do understand that the public transport portation is because we also don’t have a proper transportation system. You cannot actually even police them the way they should. So it’s a we have to approach it from many many problems. So Senator, would you say that there is now a huge influx of, I mean without, I mean with the benefit of lack of better word, aliens who have invaded Abuja or those people with suspicious character that have invaded Abuja? Well. When you say aliens mean that they’ve come from other parts of Nigeria. Because, you know, one of the things that we heard is the summer of the attackers in some part of those, I mean the areas you said that the military have chased them and they’re coming into Abuja, some of them and some of those who have experienced these attacks who say some of these guys don’t look like they’re Nigerians, they don’t speak languages that are, I mean, that are known to the Nigerian territory. So. And that’s why I’m using the word of borrowed the word aliens. And I’m saying maybe there’s some suspicious characters because some of those who have been kidnapped before, I’ve said they describe how these kidnappers look. And ordinarily when they get into the city, yeah, so they should be, they should be suspected because of their looks and the manner in which they they appear. Well, you can’t really stop people from coming in, but you can actually police the access places like the bus depots, the entrances into the city. Even I don’t. I doubt very much that they use trains, but all the accesses can be better policed and that also we need ID cards of some kind. People need to be identified and that’s why OK, people will say Lynn has been infiltrated. But having a national identity card for all Nigerians that you can show, who are you and where are you going to? If you’re talking about ID card and the rest and the rest of what you just mentioned, now what have you even know you said we can be identified by what we are putting on or what we are being identified by. Many of them are not a citizen of Nigeria precisely. So. So let’s check. OK, let’s check for example. Now those who are coming for the closest country, which is not far from Nigeria, that’s if you pass through I think this cardinal or Sokoto thereabout, Those people from the Nigeria part which do come to Nigeria and pretend as if they are citizens of Nigeria, you say you should check them. Now many of them do have the Nigeria Voters card and the Nigeria National ID card, which is known as the NIN, the nation that is the NIN. Many of them do have it and they are citizen of Nigeria and then a citizen of Nigeria. So we say we should OK get another ID card so they can’t be identified by it. Majority of them might have it because we can’t determine what orYeah. Beyond that is also that, I mean since you’re representing the FCT in the National Assembly that those who are worried that there was a very popular project in the FCT, the sensitivity cameras. Nigeria spent millions of naira in the in installing this CCTV. Part of it is supposed to be security, part of it is supposed to be monitoring what goes on in the ABL city. Would you for example, be raising a motion for Nigerians to renew the real cost of how these CCTV cameras disappeared, those who got the contract, how the contract become more or less an evade invasive contract that we cannot see some to the point that the city has now become so insecure and now we’re running out of skelter. Are you thinking of raising this CCTV matter up? When you return, yes, I am. I actually spoke several months back. I called for the contractors and they came to see me. They explained that the contract was 400 million from the Chinese government and 70 million from the Nigerian government and they installed the CCTV cameras and they were working well, so asking what the problem was, he said. The problem was that after they were installed, they need to be. The example he gave me is if I buy a car and they’ve done everything, they give me the car. They cannot be the one to be fueling the car and driving the car, you take it over. So when they they they handed it to us, we didn’t have anybody to operate it. We didn’t make any provisions for anything, that they operated it for a little bit and then they left it for us. But I also asked them the way forward. They explained to me also that the cameras that have been vandalized and damaged, they’re actually the cheaper component of the whole process thing that the back end is the more expensive one and that is still there. So I was hoping that when the minister comes, I would we would sit down and see how some sort. Senator, Senator, If I may ask and I and I plead that if these guys are telling you these stories, can they allow the media to see the back end they’re talking about? Can we see in evidence of some of these things they are talking about for the Nigerian people? Because if Nigeria spent, you talked about the figure, but I was asking this is in dollars, not Mara. For a lot of Nigerians, 400 million U.S. dollars, 400 million U.S. dollar today will be about 40 billion naira, isn’t it? I imagine my mathematics is not very good, but then I imagine that when it comes to money my better. Yes. No, when we come, I didn’t ask to see it at the time because I probably thought, OK, some sort of a security equipment. But obviously the state we’re in now, there needs to be more accountability on everybody’s part. And as the Senator representing the territory, and we’re going to insist, I’m going to insist on it, the committee on FCT is going to insist on it and we will demand to see some of the things they’re talking about and to know just how much we’ll get. Senator, Perhaps my final question tonight on the state of things in the FCT will be the way and manner some governors have gone in securing their territory using local policing and local initiatives, perhaps some vigilante coordinates, some vigilante coordinator, vigilante and local policing method. Are you thinking in that direction? Yes, I am. Just before I I travelled last week. I tried to we they had vigilante groups.

BY:LUCKY KENEDY