*FG doing its best to address insecurity, he says
By Ochioha 2
The Federal Government has pleaded with Senators who Wednesday threatened to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, to tread softly because the administration has been doing its best to bring the spiralling insecurity across the country under control.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the appeal when asked by journalists to respond to the development, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa.
Senators from opposition political parties, including the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and some members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had carpeted the President for the deteriorating security situation in the country, and gave him a six-week deadline to either address the situation or get impeached.
The Minister, who lauded the lawmakers for their patriotism and concerns, however, assured them that steps were being taken to address their concerns.
Mohammed said “we thank them for their patriotism and their concern. But we are working round the clock, 24 hours, to ensure that the situation is brought under control.
“I want to assure you that the President is aware of all these and as a matter of fact, I think tomorrow there’s going to be another Security Council meeting.
“So, it’s not a matter the President is taking lightly and like I’ll always say, some of the measures we’re going to take are not measure that you can discuss openly here. But we’re as concerned as you are, we’re not going to abandon our responsibility.”
The Minister described the latest threat by the terrorists to kidnap the President a mere propaganda and laughable.
Mohammed also said that the FEC approved a memo by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, for a standard operation procedure on maintaining the civilian and humanitarian character of asylum seekers in Cameroon.
According to him, due to insurgency in Cameroon, Nigeria had witnessed the influx of their citizens seeking asylum.
He said the Council approved that all asylum seekers must provide convincing evidence of having renounced armed struggle before being considered.
On why the government was even considering asylum to foreigners at a time Nigeria was equally facing security challenges, the minister said the issue of asylum seeking and granting was not new, adding that armed struggle by separatists movement in Cameron was equally an old matter.
“So, all we have done today is to establish the standard procedure to ensure that those who claim to be asylum seekers are actually not insurgents themselves that have come to destabilize Nigeria or people who will come and be launching attacks against their own country from the comfort of Nigeria,” he clarified.
The minister also disclosed that the Council also approved a N16 billion contract augmentation for the dualization of the ongoing 78 kilometre Kano-Katsina Road project just as it okayed the sum of N821,653,000 for the procurement of 32 operational vehicles for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
Minister of Mining and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite, in his comments said that the Council approved the Nigerian Mining Value Chain Regulation Policy.
He explained that the policy was to ensure that all mineral resources extracted from the country were enhanced and upgraded before their exportation.
According to him, this policy was to upgrade the quality and add value to mineral resources such as gold, iron ore and others hitherto being exported in raw forms by miners.
