The Senate on Wednesday directed security agencies to submit a budget to the National Assembly for special funds that would enable them to tackle security challenges in the country more effectively.
The upper chamber’s directive came after a four-hour closed-door meeting with the Chief of Defence Staff and Director-General of Department of State Service (DSS).
Others at the meeting were representatives of Comptroller-General Immigration, Inspector-General of Police and Comptroller-General of Customs.
The Senate had on May 8 summoned all Service Chiefs for explanation over proliferation of arms in the country.
Speaking on the outcome of the meeting, President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, said “we observe the funding issue and we also agreed that there must be a special funding.
“And, as such we gave the service chiefs two weeks for them to present their own budget on this area of special funding that we think will go a long way to improve the security situation in the country.
“Of course, of great concern was the issue of the coordination among the security agencies.
“One of that again is that we will be looking to have Constitutional Law passage to see what we can do to strengthen that aspect of the security.”
He said that the Senate was committed to ensuring that the unfortunate trend of killings in the country was brought to an end.
“We have all agreed to continue to work together to cooperate and work very closely in order to address this issue and we are confident that changes will begin to be seen in this area.
“We have our own role to play and they have also committed to play their own role and we hope that over the next couple of weeks, we will begin to take actions on some of these things that we have committed to.
‘It shows how committed we are in showing that we do protect the life and property of citizens,” Saraki said.
He also said that the Senate would ensure that certain outstanding bills were given accelerated hearing in order to strengthen the country’s security architecture.
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