Insecurity: Creating more zonal development commissions will resolve issues, says Gbaja

Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the house of representatives, says the establishment of more development commissions across geopolitical zones will contribute to resolving security challenges.

In April, the green chamber set up an ad hoc committee to organise a security summit, as part of efforts to restore peace across the country.

The lawmakers considered, voted and adopted the recommendations of the report during plenary on Tuesday.

Speaking to journalists after he presented the report to President Muhammadu Buhari at the state house on Tuesday, Gbajabiamila said when implemented, the suggestions in the report “will go a long way to resolve some of the issues, if not all, that pervade our society, in terms of security”.

The speaker said the committee went through “painstaking effort” to put the report together, adding that its recommendations will also guide the lower legislative chamber in making laws that will upgrade the country’s security architecture.

He said the lawmakers “thought outside the box”, as opposed to the traditional ways, in convening the security summit and invited stakeholders to generate solutions to insecurity in the country.

“As we said, from day one, we will bring the report to Mr President for actions on the recommendations, and he has graciously accepted, which he did even before the summit,” he said.

“We are hopeful and believe that many of the recommendations, both the legislative and the executive, once implemented, will go a long way to resolve some of the issues, if not all, that pervade our society, in terms of security.

“As I said, there are two sides to the report; the legislative and the executive. The legislative has about seven recommendations, executive recommendations about 19 in all. There are overlapping mandates, for instance, between the security agencies, which breeds confusion in the line of reporting and those overlapping mandates will be addressed by the house as we’ve already introduced bills to that effect, and so on and so forth.

“There are several recommendations. We’ve agreed to establish zonal commissions in all the zones, like the North-East Development Commission. We’ll have the south-west, south-east, north-west, south-south, and that goes a long way in resolving regional and zonal issues.”