The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr Tajudeen Abbas, has reaffirmed the House’s commitment to supporting bills that strengthen intelligence gathering to tackle insecurity in Nigeria.
Abbas stated this at a public hearing on a bill for an act to establish private intelligence and investigation councils, which was organised by the House of Representatives committee on National Security and Intelligence, and held in Abuja.
The speaker, who Hon. Muhktar Shagaya represented, declared the public hearing open. The bill seeks to develop a regulatory framework for overseeing private intelligence and investigation firms by ensuring that they operate ethically, responsibly, and within established professional standards.
He said security reforms remained a top national priority and that the time had come for multi-level policing to move from theory to decisive action.
“Beyond constitutional reforms, there’s also an urgent need to strengthen community policing as provided in the police act 2020 to make it more effective and more responsive to the realities of local communities”, he said.
Earlier, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence, Hon. Ahmed Satomi, said that if the bill is established, it aims to standardise industry practices and provide accreditation and certification for continuous training and development to enhance collaboration between the private and public security sectors.
He said, “Strengthening our security architecture requires innovative approaches, including effective regulations of private security practices.”
Speaking in an interview with Newsmen after submitting the position of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, VGN, the Commandant General, Navy Captain Umar Abubakar Bakori (Rtd) said the Vigilante Group of Nigeria had over a million members scattered all over the 774 local government areas of the country, noting that the VGN represents the masses. Therefore, they are best positioned to assist the security agencies in community policing issues.
“State Police is not the solution, the Police are in charge of internal security, the military is in charge of the defence of the Nation, they can not do it alone, we the VGN are partners in progress”
“If you add up all the security operatives, they are not up to 1 million, but we are over 1 million; they need to carry us along because we get intelligence better than any other organisation because we live with the people at the community levels”, he said.
Navy Captain Bakori urged both the federal and state Governments to support the Vigilante Group of Nigeria VGN in its quest to assist other security agencies in policing the communities, adding that although the government spends billions of Naira annually on security, the VGN is not given a dime in its volunteer efforts.
Other stakeholders who made submissions at the public hearing included the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Navy, the Federal Fire Service, the Police, and the Nigerian Immigration Service.
