AfriPulse
Niger State House of Assembly has threatened to halt legislative business if the security situation bedevilling the state is not adequately addressed, warning that the crisis has assumed an alarming dimension.
The House called for the immediate rescue of the abducted St. Mary’s Catholic School students and the deployment of troops to known bandits’ routes.
The lawmakers, who unanimously condemned last Friday’s school abduction, acknowledged that the situation is gradually slipping out of control.
This followed a motion of urgent public importance raised during plenary by the member representing Agwara Constituency, Hon. Mohammed Nura Agwara, who described the abduction scene involving the St. Mary’s students as “pathetic and unfortunate”.
Speaker Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, who presided over the sitting, said the state is under siege, with investors fleeing and contractors abandoning projects. He warned that legislative business would be shut down if the state government fails to act within two weeks.
According to him, “Let us not pretend about the current situation. The state is now in the eyes of the world because of security challenges. Investors are beginning to turn back from the state, and contractors handling various roads projects have abandoned the sites.
“The current security situation has eroded all the efforts of the present administration in transforming the state. A concrete action must be taken if not we will have no choice than to shut down legislative business because we are the representatives of the people”.
Sarkindaji gave a grim account of conditions in his constituency, Mariga, where residents of more than 50 communities, including his own political ward, have fled their ancestral homes and abandoned their farms.
Lamenting further, he noted, “farmers who usually harvest over hundreds of bags of grains are now begging for food”.
He said further, “We can no longer keep quiet because we are the representatives of the people. It is high time we put away our differences and face the current challenges. If schools can be shut down, markets closed down then we can equally shut down legislative business until the situation is addressed”.
Stressing the need to deploy security personnel to bandits’ routes, he added, “the abducted school students will soon be moved through the same routes to Zamfara State. They don’t have any other route and everybody knows about it yet nothing is being done about it”.
The House, in its four-point resolution, appealed to the Federal Government to mobilise all resources and deploy troops to strategic bandits’ and terrorists’ routes in Niger State to ensure the immediate rescue of the abducted students.
Source: Daily Post Nigeria | Read the Full Story…
