PDP-Ekiti Senator Biodun Olujimi, accused President Muhammadu Buhari of losing authority on his administration at the plenary on wednesday which thrown the senate into a rowdy session. Mrs. Olujimi, responded to a motion on the face-off between Nigeria’s security agencies (State Security Services, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the National Intelligence Agency) raised by Dino Melaye, Kogi-APC.
Senator Melaye called on the Senate to take an urgent action on the incidents he described as “recipe for national disaster”.
In his words, “Mr. President, the media and the social media, print and electronics have been awash with a disaster that took place yesterday. The EFCC went to the residence of the former Director General of the SSS, Ita Ekpeyong, to effect an arrest and the Directorate of State Security stopped the EFCC from arresting him. That created environmental brouhaha. The whole environment and neighbours were stopped from lawfully gaining entrance into their homes because of this confusion.”
“Same yesterday, the EFCC wanted to arrest the former DG NIA, Mr. Oke. Also, the officers of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency stopped that arrest. We are not here to say who is at blame. We have been embarrassed before the international community. That two sister agencies will engage in fisticuffs, arrest and stoppage of arrests. Mr. President, this is a recipe for national disaster.”
Commenting on Mr. Melaye’s motion, Mrs. Olujimi said President Buhari had lost his authority as ‘nobody’ was in charge of the current administration.
“Right now, we have a situation whereby nobody is in charge of anything and we cannot honestly blame anyone for what is happening. The truth is that you cannot go to the house of a security agent, a man who had kept the secrets of Nigeria for so long, and just try to arrest him like chicken.
“This is the first time we’ll see gross irresponsibility in government whereby there is no arbiter. No one to come in between two agencies that belong to only one person. The two agencies report to one person, the presidency and now we find them fighting on the pages of the newspapers, it’s a shame. We are calling on the President, he has to sit up, he should be up and doing. Call these people to order.”
“Mr. President, you will remember that we rejected Mr. Magu as Chairman of EFCC and up till today nothing has been said about it. The Senate is divided. Nobody has come out to say we need to resolve the issue.
“After all, there are 170 million Nigerians, all of a sudden, we are saying only one person can do this job. Mr. President, something has to be done, the presidency has to be called to order. Nobody is in charge of this government. Nobody is in charge and somebody needs to be in charge.”
Her threw the house into a rowdy session.