Senator says his colleagues are afraid of Buhari

Sani stated this at plenary on Tuesday, January 16, 2018 while reacting to a report by the Senate adhoc committee on the review of the security infrastructure of the country, especially the Benue killings.

The Kaduna state lawmaker condemned the failure of his colleagues to direct the issues of security to President Muhammadu Buhari who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

These were his words:

“When you use a religious and ethnic or religious lenses to view an issue, you will see a religious, ethnic or sectional image. This is not the time for diplomacy and courtesy. This is the time to provide leadership for a nation that is in a national emergency and national distrust.

“There is something that I like with the presidency. When it comes to the issue of directing attacks to the National Assembly, they don’t in anyway curtail, reduce or suppress any of the missiles. But when it comes to our turn to point the finger where the problem is, you will see some form of crowdies, escapism and people who try to water-down the truth.

“In the report that was presented to us, ‘Federal Government’ was mentioned about seven times. The security of this country is under the direct control of the President. Why are you shying away from calling on the President to wake up and stand up to the challenge of protecting this country?

“Few days ago, I saw leaders and elders from Benue state in the villa. What were you doing in the Villa? You are bereaved. Your people were killed. The villa should go to Benue and not Benue coming to Villa, for goodness sake.

“We’re in a country where there is no complacent reward for violence. The villages and victims are blamed. We must tell ourselves the truth.

“Governors that supposed to be chief executives of their states leave their duty posts on a daily and weekly basis to the villa to endorse and re-endorse the President. Too much and over-endorsement. We should tell ourselves the truth.

“Things are not going right in this country and we are failing. People are dying in their thousands, kidnappings, bloodshed in their thousands from Zamfara to Kaduna to Taraba to Benue to Plateau to Nasarawa state.

“About this report, it is: ‘The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should rise up to the occasion…’

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“We’re all here shifting blames and trying to evade the truth. We can’t solve this problem. Nigerian political class and politicians are more interested in the 2019 general election than the lives of our people.

“From the executive, legislature and state governors, people are more interested about the INEC timetable. We can’t solve this problem if we see everything through ethno-religious lens.

“There must be a clear distinction between armed herdsmen who must be confronted frontally and Fulani cattle rearers but we’re not doing that.

“We have reached a point that people have lost hope in the government. We’re here trying to massage egos; we don’t want to confront the president because people want to come back to the 9th Senate. They do not want to lose their tickets while people are being killed in this country,” he added.

This is even as the Senate ordered the inspector general of Police, Ibrahim Idris to arrest those responsible for the killings in Benue state within fourteen days.