Ex-Senate President Proposes Bipartisan Commission To Tackle Insecurity

A former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, has recommended the establishment of a bipartisan commission to tackle the security challenges in various parts of the country.

Nnamani, who is also seeking to contest the presidential election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), made the proposal on Monday in Abuja when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“Let me tell you something; one of the major problems we are facing now is insecurity,” he stated. “If I have the opportunity, the first thing I will do is to set up a bi-partisan commission.

“We should set up a bipartisan commission in Nigeria to study why our (armed) forces perform very well outside (the country) but they have not been able to eradicate the people causing trouble in the North East – kidnappers and all kinds of criminals.

“How come we have not been able to take care of Boko Haram; is that the failure of our forces, poor equipment, poor sharing of information among the forces? the commission can unravel it in one or two months, and it helps us to know where to go.”

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Hardly will a week pass by without reports of attacks by non-state armed groups on communities in states of the Federation.

Some of the states where activities of these groups which federal authorities have designated as terrorists include Zamfara, Niger, Imo, Anambra, and Kaduna, among several others.

These attacks have claimed many lives and left scores injured since the beginning of the year, and government facilities were targets for armed men, in some cases.

According to the former Senate President who led the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly between 2005 to 2007, the United States adopted a similar approach in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

He explained that the U.S. government at the time set up a bi-partisan commission which he said led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

Nnamani, however, expressed concerns over the ability of the present police force to tackle the threat, stressing that these challenges required modern training to be effectively nipped in the bud.

“The Nigerian police force, as it is constituted today, is not able to fight this situation now,” he stated. “We need a special force, well-trained (police force).

“We should appeal to other countries that have gone through similar problems to come and train a special crack team of our police to go after them (the criminals), not the soldiers.”