9th July, 2015
Eromosele Ebhomele
The first step to curbing insurgency in Nigeria is for the citizens to see it as a collective challenge that needs a collective solution, Moshood Olanrewaju Oshun, the lawmaker representing Lagos Mainland Constituency 2 at the Lagos State House of Assembly, has said.
Oshun, who spoke in an interview at the House, opined that eternal vigilance should be the doctrine of Nigerians in the relation to insecurity and insurgency as witnessed in many parts of the country.
According to him, the government cannot work in isolation, but in unison with people who must be ready to cooperate and report cases of threats and suspicion at all times.
Oshun’s submission comes after President Muhammadu Buhari had on Wednesday said the insurgency would soon be a thing of the past.
Re-echoing this promise, Oshun pointed that insurgency is a major focus of the current administration and that Buhari has taken time to understand the situation of the country so that he would know when and how to act without making mistakes of past governments.
“He has met with some African presidents since he came to power. He has even released money to fight terrorism, that would tell us that it is a priority to him and that he cares for lives and property of Nigerians.
“It is not something that can be solved in a day. It took the United States of America several years to track and kill Osama bin Laden.
“It is not a war, where you can identify the enemies immediately. You don’t even know if the person standing beside you in a market is a suicide bomber,” he said.
On the call by some people that the use of Hijab, the veil worn by Muslim women, be stopped as part of efforts to curtail suicide bombings, the lawmaker reminded that it is not only women that have so far being used for suicide bombings in the country.
He described the use of Hijab as an Islamic way of dressing. “You cannot say because you want to fight a war, you deprive people of their rights.
“Islam says that women should dress in a certain way. We should not deprive others of their rights all because of the bad eggs amongst them,” he said.
On the Boko Haram suspects that were ordered to be released by the President, Oshun, a former British security officer, said that they were suspects, who must have been investigated and found innocent before being released.
He noted that the road blocks recently dismantled could have been as a result of complaints that the soldiers now use the opportunity to extort money from Nigerians.
“I am sure that was the reason the President told the army officers to leave the roads and go back to the baracks to do their jobs.
“The President gets security reports everyday and he must have weighed the options,” he noted.
While supporting the recent financial bail-out for states that are owing workers salaries, Oshun said that this could not be a continous exercise, stressing that it is just a way of alleviating poverty since the concerned states found it difficult to pay workers salaries.
“We need to come back to the round table and discuss. We need states that are viable and those that are not viable should go.
“The truth of the matter is that so many things went wrong with the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan, which the current administration is trying to resolve.
“You can see things coming out, a lot of money had disappeared from the national purse. Once that is resolved, you would not see any state owing salaries.
“It was because the money meant for states were not released then or else no state would have owed salaries,” he said.
The lawmaker stated further that people spread so many rumours about the salaries of Nigerian legislators.
“Sometimes I would get to my constituency and people would tell me that they heard that we had just been given N40 million or N50 million each by the government, but all these are false. People just sit down somewhere and formulate stories.
“I don’t know the salaries of the members of the National Assembly, but there is Freedom of Information Law in Nigeria, we can check that out.
“So many electorate live above their means and they thereafter come to politicians to ask for money. You have a driver with five wives going to a legislator that his wife had just been delivered of a baby; we have a cleaner with 10 or 15 children.
“If you want to have 10 children and you can cater for them, no problem. But you expect me as a legislator to cater for your children.
“You have a driver, who earns about N30,000 a month, but goes to a beer parlour everyday. Yet, he would go to a legislator that his house rent is due, he needs to pay the school fees of his children. When we talk of change, it should be total change.
“Those fixing salaries can review them, but we need total change in Nigeria,” he stated.