By Uche Minikwu Jr. News/comments, June 8, 2019.
The meeting of the 36 state governors, under the guise of Nigeria Governors Forum, NGF led by its chairman, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti state over state of the nation yesterday at the Presidential Villa with President Muhammadu Buhari witnessed fruitful discussion as trending issues were holistically dealt with, in a view to finding lasting solution to them.
The gathering also had in attendance, security chiefs and others. Among issues discussed were on insecurity: kidnapping, armed robbery, insurgency, and militancy among others. Mr. President who spoke disclosed that $1 billion has been approved from the Excess Crude Account to fight insecurity had been disbursed among the security agencies, though, not enough to tackle the security challenges but a commitment first..
It could be recalled that state governors had earlier envisaged the creation of state police especially the governors of the opposition party, PDP to tackle security issues, while some analysts rejected the idea, noting that state governors will abuse the establishment by wish-hunting their opponents with it.
On his part, Fayemi noted that there will be a special meeting of National Economic Council, NEC, which is going to chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to take position on the myriads of security problems in order to give confidence to the citizenry.
Giving detail insight into the purpose of the meeting of NGF with the president, yesterday, he said,: “The meeting was at our instance as governors of the 36 states collectively.
It has to do with the security situation in the country, our concerns about what is going on all across the nation. “We had a very fruitful meeting with Mr. President. Of course, he was not oblivious of the challenges, he gets security reports on a daily basis, he understands what the issues are. “But we felt as chief security officers in our respective states, it is also important for us to at least keep Mr. President abreast of the enormity of the challenges we are facing and also highlight the concerns of our citizens across the board about rural banditry, farmers/herders clashes, kidnapping, militancy in the Delta, insurgency and cultism. “So we discussed extensively all of these issues and looked at the various ways that we felt as governors we could assist Mr. President as the Commander-in-Chief to curb these issues. Of course, we were able to, in the first instance, look at the nexus between our economic challenges and the security challenges as well and the importance of tackling the causes of crime not just crime on its own.
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