Senate President Godswill Akpabio has urged his colleague, and former Deputy Senate Leader, Abdul Ningi, to wait till he becomes a Governor if he wants to know the full details of what Governors use security votes for in their respective states.
Akpabio made the submission during plenary on Tuesday in the course of a verbal exchange between him and Ningi on the status of insecurity in the country and why Governors are not using their security votes to fight insecurity.
Ningi had submitted that each state governor gets not less than ₦500 million on a monthly basis as a security vote and challenged them to use such funds to fight insecurity.
The Bauchi Central lawmaker made the submission while contributing to a debate of urgent national importance on incessant banditry attacks, killings and displacement of innocent Nigerians in some villages in Billiri Local Government Area of Gombe State, which was moved by Senator Anthony Siyako Yaro, representing Gombe South.
He argued that Governors are constitutionally recognized as the Chief Security Officers of their states and should, therefore, be actively involved in fighting insecurity in their respective states rather than rely on the federal government.
Ningi said: “I know as a matter of fact that every state government has security votes. This issue is what security vote represents and why is it that every time there is security problem, nobody mentions the role of the governors?”
In response, Akpabio, who is a former Cross River State Governor, urged Senator Ningi to wait till he becomes a governor if he wants to know the details of how security votes are used.
The Senate President added that many security battles are won in the background but don’t make the news because the media prefers bad news to good news.
Akpabio, however, agreed with Ningi’s submission that security should not be left to the federal government alone but should be the collective responsibility of all stakeholders, including the state governors.
“When you become a governor, you will find out what they do with the security vote. The amount of the security that you stop or you void are more than the ones that come to the public. And then those ones are never reported.
‘’So sometimes, security agencies will go to the top, get at the criminals before they carry out their their nefarious acts.
“But those ones are never reported because it’s only bad news that is good news. The press can never report anything that is very good. But it is true that the state governments have a role to play and that they cannot hand over security to the federal government alone.
“Coincidentally, security is everybody’s business. If we need to be secure, every Nigerian must be part of maintenance of security, peace and harmony in every part of the federation,” Akpabio submitted.
