Food security: Reps Summons CDS, Defence Minister over ‘Ungoverned spaces

The House of Representatives Committee on Defence, will on Monday, July 23, 2024, meet with the Minister of Defence, Abubakar Badaru and the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Christopher Musa, to ascertain how the military intends to go about the directive by President Bola Tinubu for the military to cover ‘ungoverned spaces’ being occupied by criminals.

The Chairman of the Committee, Babajimi Benson, who disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday while briefing a handful of journalists in his office, said the President gave the charge as part of measures to address the challenges of food security in the country.

He said: “If there is food security, insecurity will go down. So, the army should take possession of their land if they have one million hectares somewhere, there is not going to be insecurity in that area because it is going to be manned by the military.

“We are taking the initiative on Monday next week. We are inviting the Minister of Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff to come and explain to us how they want to transform Mr President’s directives into reality. Let the Armed Forces who protect us be involved in this. Let them cultivate the vast land before them.”

Benson, who represents Ikorodu Federal Constituency, Lagos State, said when he received “reports from my military people, they told us that there are a lot of ungovernable spaces, areas where no single government presence exists.

“It now behooves the people to be wise in choosing people that administer them because if you do that, this is a game changer in my opinion. I think it is a game changer that can be catalytic for Nigeria’s development.”

He commended President Tinubu for championing local government autonomy.

“This will help in addressing insecurity in the country as security starts from the grassroots and with the autonomy, local government council chairmen will have more funds to develop their areas and secure lives as well as properties.

“Financial autonomy granted to local governments would spur development and close ungoverned spaces which induced insecurity.

“I give super kudos to the President of Nigeria for ensuring that there is local government autonomy because security starts from the grassroots. So, if you empower a local government to have full receipt of their monthly applications, they don’t have immunity like the governors and people are aware that now, the shackles are broken. I don’t think there will be any stretch or space in Nigeria that will not be governable.”

For the umpteenth time, the lawmaker, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, urged the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to immediately halt the unfair business practices against Air Peace, Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Limited and other business concerns from unhealthy practices by their foreign competitors.

“I moved a motion on this recently and my intention was to ensure that there is fairness, justice and good conscience in doing business in Nigeria.

“It will be very unfair if there are conspiracies by foreign companies to undermine Nigerian companies. What we frowned on is these companies coming together to offer predatory prices that are below the market rates in order to edge out Nigerian own enterprises.

“These companies don’t do these things in their own countries. If we don’t check it, It can stifle Nigerian businesses by reducing their prices and then, they jack up their prices.

“It is speculated that this happened recently against Air Peace. At some points, tickets from Lagos to London were selling as high as N4m. All of a sudden, a local company came in and all these companies just dropped prices lower than what Air Peace was offering.

“We spoke about Dangote, there is also a need to investigate what happened because if Dangote Refinery is the reason for this non-sale of crude oil, is this not part of a predatory way of ensuring that Nigeria keeps importing and Dangote refinery is left out?

“The FCCPC should also be watchful of this and make sure that if there is a gang-up to stifle Nigeria, they should quickly step into it or do an investigative hearing in order for the world to be aware that Nigeria is informed about predatory pricing strategies.”