There was uproar at a 2025 budget defence session on Thursday at the National Assembly as lawmakers tried to sieve through the details of last year’s budget of the Nigeria Police.
Trouble started when the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, tried to spell out the details of spending funds for the construction of five zonal Police headquarters across the country.
Egbetokun had barely commenced his presentation when a member of the House of Representatives, Mark Esset from Akwa Ibom interjected – questioning why the details of what the IGP read were not contained in the document given to him.
However, it was Senator Onyekachi Nwebonyi – a member of the All Progressives Congress and Principal Officer that turned on the heat, insisting that as a senator he should have the appropriate copy of what the IGP dished out to them.
Nwebonyi said: “We are here to serve Nigerians and Nigerians should see us as a very serious institution.
“We are not against the presentation of the IGP. But I, as the Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, should have what the IGP is reading.”
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All efforts to explain his intention were thwarted by shouts and rowdiness which apparently led Nwebonyi’s anger to rapidly grow more intense after his Point of Order was overruled by the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs, Honourable Abubakar Makki Yalleman to allow the IGP continue with his presentation.
With his anger at boiling point, Nwoebonyi took his belongings and stormed out of the budget defence exercise, but as he did, he kept exchanging hot words with mostly House of Representatives members who jeered at him as he took his exit.
A member of the House of Representatives, Hon Yusuf Gagdi, who represents Panshin/Kanam/Kanke Federal Constituency of Plateau State, was apparently disappointed at what played out even as he explained that the committee’s decision to allow the IGP to continue to speak was in line with established parliamentary procedures.
He added that it is completely out of place for lawmakers to interject when they do not have the floor.
When the dust simmered down – the IGP continued his presentation saying that the Police were grossly underfunded and called for the removal of the police from the “envelope” budgetary system.
On recruitment, Egbetokun disclosed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has increased the yearly quota from 10,000 to 30,000 and that this will greatly improve the Force’s performance.
He urged the National Assembly to help the police deliver on its mandate “Otherwise we depend only on the budgetary allocation.
“We are glad that this committee has identified the gross underfunding of the police,” he said.