Presidential committee meets security chiefs, seeks framework to secure natural resources

An inter-ministerial committee set up by President Bola Tinubu to protect the country’s natural resources has met with the security chiefs.

At a recent federal executive council (FEC) meeting, Tinubu constituted the committee to design a blueprint for securing the country’s natural resources, including solid minerals, forests, and marine economy.

Dele Alake, minister of solid minerals development and chairman of the ccommittee chaired the meeting with the security chiefs in Abuja on Thursday.

According to a statement by Segun Tomori, special assistant on media to the minister, Alake said the sit-down was as a follow up to the maiden meeting held to get inputs for developing a workable strategy to effectively secure Nigeria’s natural resources, in line with the presidential mandate.

“Today, we have deliberated exhaustively. We have covered all the issues, all the grounds,” the statement reads.

“Certain decisions have been made, and there is going to be another follow-up meeting because the security agencies are going to give us the framework of execution of our mandate.

“That has been the crux of today’s deliberations. The security agencies, the service chiefs, NSA’s office, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) are going to form a smaller committee to give us the workplan, execution modalities and we will be meeting in another fortnight.”

Speaking on the Ibadan explosion, Alake said the report of the ongoing forensic investigations by security agencies is being awaited before necessary action is taken.

Present at the meeting were Balarabe Lawal, minister of environment; Gboyega Oyetola, minister of marine and blue economy; Abubakar Badaru, minister of defence; Tunji Olubunmi-Ojo, minister of interior.

Security agencies were represented by Kayode Egbetokun, inspector-general of police (IGP); Ahmed Audi, commandant-general of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC); and Abdulkadir Abubakar and I. Abbas, representatives of the chief of air staff and chief of naval ataff, respectively.