Mohammed Monguno, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, and Legal Matters, on Monday, consoled Nigerians over the current security challenges rocking country.
Monguno stated that the security sector received enough funding in the 2024 appropriation act to empower various security agencies in fulfilling their duty of safeguarding lives and property.
Despite allocating N3.25 trillion for national security out of the total N28.7 trillion budget, the issue of insecurity persists across different regions of the country.
In January 2024, there were approximately 245 reported kidnapping cases, with kidnappers demanding over N6 billion in ransoms, as reported by the Civil Society Organisation, Enough is Enough.
Speaking at a stakeholders’ dialogue on the State of Human Rights in Nigeria, organized by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre in Abuja, he discloed that the government’s primary responsibility is to provide adequate security for its citizens.
He further pledged that the National Assembly would strengthen its oversight functions to ensure the prudent utilization of these funds.
He said:
“I want to assure you that the 10th National Assembly is a very responsible and responsive assembly to the yearnings and aspirations of the people. We feel the pains of Nigerians that we are representing as a result of the problem of insecurity in the country.
“And the Senate, in order to address this problem in the 2024 Appropriations Act, has made robust provisions to the security sector because the security sector got the highest amount of allocation because the National Assembly is desirous of giving all the wherewithal and the necessary input for them to be able to discharge their constitutional mandate of protecting the lives and properties of Nigeria to grantee peace order and good governance.
“Security is the primary responsibility of government. And that is the social contract that the government has with the people. That is the primacy of governance and because of that, the National Assembly appropriated the highest amount of money to the security sector.
“And we are also going to double on our oversight functions, to oversight the security agencies that are charged with the responsibility of guaranteeing our security to make sure that these funds are judiciously utilized for the benefit of Nigerians.”
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