Senator representing Cross River South Senatorial district, Senator Gershom Bassey has said that Nigeria can’t move forward as a nation unless there is adequate fund for the country’s security agencies.
Gershom who made the assertion at the weekend while interacting with journalists said the area of security in Nigeria must be properly funded if we must move forward.
He said:” I think there is one area that we must address as a responsible national if we want to go forward in securing our nation whether it is against external security from external aggression or criminality within our nation. I think that is the issue of funding and budgeting.
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“Recently I have interacted with lots of security agencies because of the happenings in my state and it has become very clear to me that a lot of our security agencies are not adequately funded.
“This is an area that we as senate and National Assembly can look into. I know that we have the police trust fund and others but it still appears that we do not have enough funding particularly for our security agencies I do not want to go into details”.
“I think one thing we have to put together may be a committee or a standing committee to look into the adequate funding of these agencies so that they can meet up with the pressure we put on them,”
“The second issue is the issue of recruitment of sufficient personnel. We know that there is a problem at the moment with police recruitment but we need to have adequate funding in order to meet up with the pressure we put on our agencies.
“We are under policed and under secured and it is very clear that if we do not have enough security agents to secure the population then you do not have security and you will have security issues , if you do not have enough equipment to secure our population then you will have security issues,” he said.