A senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia-PDP), has criticised President Muhammadu Buhari for constantly denying responsibility when things go wrong.
The senator said Mr. Buhari is always in the habit of saying, “I don’t know.”
Mr. Abaribe said this while contributing to a motion on the recent violence killings in Kogi state by suspected herdsmen.
Atai Aidoko Ali (Kogi-APC) had raised a motion on the activities of armed bandits who he referred to as ‘Fulani herdsmen.’
He said the herdsmen killed 32 people in two local government areas of the state on Wednesday.
Mr. Abaribe, in his reaction, said President Buhari by his attitude had not shown readiness to curb insecurity across the country.
“I agree with the senate leader who said this is a moment where we have to work with the executive. The only thing I don’t agree with is, this executive that you want us to work with, have they accepted that they are the people that have responsibility?
“We have a president that will say I don’t know my IG didn’t even follow my order. A president that says I didn’t even know when this happened. Every little thing he doesn’t know.”
Mr. Abaribe was cut short by the Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, who invoked Order 53 (4) to call his colleague to order.
He asked Mr. Abaribe to confine his observation to the subject matter and not digress.
Resuming his contribution, Mr. Abaribe continued his attack on the president.
He said that security operatives were incapacitated because the ‘Commander-in-chief is always not knowing.’
“I’m keeping my contribution to security and the Commander-in-chief of Nigeria is in charge of security and when the Commander-in-chief says I don’t know what happened, then we have to worry whether this our security is actually in the right hands.
“Let us bring to the fore another aspect which the senate leader mentioned. He said that the security forces are overstretched, we agree but distinguished senator Marafa has told us here that information was given in the Zamfara case to the same security people and the governor was dancing Arabango somewhere else and left the security. Is that not what you said? So, it is not a question of not having enough people, it is a question of not acting on intelligence and information that you have. And of course I can’t blame them for not acting because the President says I don’t know.
“How will you act on what you don’t know? Mr. President, let us beg this president; please take responsibility for one thing. It’s not everything that you don’t know so that we will be safe in Nigeria.”