Date: 2018-07-01

The Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, has called for the removal of "incapable" security chiefs in the country over the continued killings and security challenges bedeviling the nation.

Dr Saraki made the call on Saturday when he visited communities affected by a rainstorm in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

Hundreds of Nigerians have been killed in several parts of the country in 2018 alone and Saraki believes no society should witness such as situation and carry on as usual.

"This is not something to be politicised. If somebody is not capable and cannot do what he has to do, let others have the opportunity to do it," a visibly angry Saraki said before accusing the security chiefs and agencies of failing to work together.

"We have had situations where security officials have told us there is poor coordination. One, A is not talking to B, Be is not talking to A. They don't attend meetings jointly and things need to be done.

"Let us forget the issue of party, these are lives of people " and let's remove politics. It is not about who is the Speaker of the House, who is the President of the Senate. It is about Nigeria."

Senate President Bukola Saraki says drastic action has to be taken to end the killings in the country and protect Nigerians

But for the "politicisation of issues", the Senate President said the warnings of the National Assembly about the dangerous trend in the country would have been since heeded and changes made.

"As you know, the National Assembly under my leadership, many months back, had seen this danger, called for a security summit, we had addressed the issue of security architecture. We had said that there is definitely a failure of the security architecture of the country," the Senate President said.

To address the alleged failure, the National Assembly had invited security chiefs, especially the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, but were unhappy with the response they got.

He said, "You are all very aware that some service chiefs decided in their own wisdom that there is no need for them to work with the National Assembly to address these issues.

"There is no society that continues to see the kind of killings here and think that it should be business as usual. It requires drastic action, it requires a collaboration of all agencies and all arms of government for us to be serious."