The Senate on Tuesday took a strong exception to weekend’s killing of farmers in Borno State by Boko Haram insurgents.
It castigated President Muhammadu Buhari’s government for failing to secure Nigerians and called for urgent measures to restructure the security architecture.
The nation’s foremost lawmaking organ put the death toll of the Borno killings at 67, up from 43, whose bodies were buried on Sunday.
The Senate also heard how Boko Haram has seized the rural areas of Borno State where the insurgents collect dues from citizens.
Senator Kashim Shettima, Borno State’s immediate past governor, sponsored the motion whose content was passed wholly by senators.
It will now be sent to the President as the Senate’s resolution on the matter.
The highlights of the titled: Beheading of 67 farmers in Borno by Boko Haram insurgents: the need for urgent decisive action,”
The Senate said: “If the President insists that the security chiefs are doing their work well, the logical implication is that the President himself as the Commander-in-Chief of the country, has failed in his most rudimentary assignment of securing the nation.
“Protecting the lives and property of citizens is the primary obligation of government and any government that cannot discharge this basic obligation loses any iota of legitimacy,” it added.
Shettima said he got the latest death toll from the attack from residents of Kwashabe village in Zabamari where the killings took place.
It said machinery must be put in place to ensure that all resources meant and deployed for security are actually spent on the needs on the ground.
It also urged the President “to take immediate steps to restructure, remodel and revamp the country’s entire security architecture and provide enough state-of-the-art weapons and equipment to effectively combat the belligerent power of the insurgents”
The Senate enjoined the Federal Government “to aggressively explore multilateral and bilateral options of partnership with the neighbouring nations of Chad, Niger and Cameroons towards, reviving and strengthening the Multi-national Joint Task Force and finding a lasting solution to the scourge of insurgency in the Lake Chad region.”
