The Nigeria Police, the Army, the State Security Service and other security agencies will come under legislative scrutiny over their individual efforts or negligence in averting recent cases of terror in the country when the House of Representatives resumes sitting this week.
Besides, the house would be reviewing several reports of key sectors that were buried by the Dimeji Bankole administration, including the power sector probe report that tore the National Assembly apart and attracted international attention in 2008.
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The spokesman of the House of Representatives, Hon. Bamidele Opeyemi (ACN, Ekiti), told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY that the House would summon the security agencies with a view to looking into their activities in the last few months and the impact it has had on the security of the country.
“I can confirm that the leadership of the House is concerned about the activities of terrorists in the country, and the House is going to look into the issue of insecurity in a holistic manner. The attack on the United Nations building in Abuja, or terrorism itself, is an international issue and we will treat it as such.
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“We want to treat it the way the United States treated it on September 9, 2001. The issue of the bombing of the World Trade Centre was a collective effort of political parties. It was not the issue of a single party or a leading party. In this effort, the security agencies will no doubt be the primary sector to look at.” he said.
Also, Hon. Emmanuel Jime (PDP, Guma-Makurdi, Benue State) confirmed to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY that the House would look into the matter, saying that some critical probe reports would be dusted up.
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Said Jime: “What we are going to do (when we resume) and need to do, is to look into the issues that have surrounded the bombings and insecurity in the country. We would look at the security agencies and see the extent to which they have been functioning within the limited capacity that they have.
“We would do this because, certainly, some people are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. We will look at all these elements, when we come back from recess (on Tuesday). Hopefully, we should be able to swing into action the moment we come back from our recess and begin to examine the issue of insecurity in the country.”
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The former Benue State House of Assembly speaker and a top member of Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal’s “ think-tank” in the House of Representatives, said the House would also dust up the power probe report and other critical reports on key sectors of the economy that were shelved by the Sixth Assembly.
He regretted that the findings of the Hon. Ndudi Elumelu Committee on the power sector brought division among members and had some of his colleagues whom he did not name working for the top government functionaries who were indicted against the committee.
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The Ndudi Elumelu committee report indicted former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the way and manner his administration executed the estimated $16 billion power project.
The lawmaker stated: “One of our saddest moments in the Sixth Assembly was the power probe. No sooner was that power probe report presented than certain interests began to emerge. The people who were indicted by the probe recruited people among us, who stood firmly to make sure that the report was trivialised.
“I remember that during my contribution on the Legislative Agenda, I made the point that perhaps some of those probes that we made in the past, we needed to go back to them and bring them back, because, in any case, this is a new Assembly with a life of its own.
“Of course, we are not bound by whatever transpired in the Sixth Assembly. My suggestion was adopted by the House, so we are going to look into the past probes.”
He added, “Certainly, in my time as a member of the House, starting from 2007 till now, I have to say that, for me, one of the saddest moments till now is that the House of Representatives, especially the Sixth Assembly, did not handle probes well, especially the power probe. The way that we handled the report of that probe ultimately trivialised a very serious issue.
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“There is no gainsaying the fact that when you conduct a probe of the magnitude, especially a power probe, there are very big toes that you are stepping on, and if you do not have sufficient courage of conviction, then, what you are likely to get is that those probes don’t get efficient, and very little is achieved.”
The lawmaker, who also spoke on how the present leadership emerged, said Tambuwal was the best thing to have happened to democracy in Nigeria:? “When some of us were standing firm at the onset of the Seventh Assembly to ensure that the House was completely owned by the leadership of the National Assembly, a lot of people might not have understood the context in which the fight was waged. I can tell you that this is one of the areas that made that fight very important for our democracy.
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“The fact of the matter is that we now have a leadership in place owned by the members, as it were, and there is a Legislative Agenda owned by the House and, as you know, one of the issues in the Agenda, is the promise of the speaker to the Nigerian people that this Assembly will do things differently from the Sixth Assembly.”
According to him, the Tambuwal House will ensure that “reports of probes will be discussed in the open, people will see them. There will be transparency, and the moment you imbue a process with transparency, the work will also be there transparently for people to see. If we can achieve that, then, I think, as a parliament, you would have done your part.
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