Senator representing Southern Borno Senatorial District, Ali Ndume, has thrown more weight behind Governor Babagana Zulum’s appeal to President Bola Tinubu to halt the purported merger of the Nigerian Army University Biu (NAUB) with the Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA), Kaduna.
The Oronsaye Committee Report (OCR) 2012, hitherto adopted by the federal government seeks to merge or scrap several Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), including institutions with duplicating functions as a means of cutting cost in governance.
But Senator Ndume who addressed journalists yesterday in Maiduguri, said, Borno State, and indeed all the other states of the North East are proud of NAUB which was established since 2018, adding that merging or subsuming it into another institution has to be by an Act of Parliament.
Ndume who is the Chief Whip of the Senate noted that, NAUB had even graduated its first set, while many undergraduates were waiting for graduation and issuance of their statement of results or certificates, stressing that scrapping of such a top civil-military institution is against development and research.
“NAUB was created out of necessity and to ensure there is civil-military relations in the North Eastern parts of the country, especially Borno State which has suffered devastation of lives and property due to over a decade Boko Haram insurgency.
“Secondly, NAUB is not part of the Oronsaye Report. The OCR was in 2012, while NAUB was established in 2018 by approval of the National Executive with enactment of an appropriate law that backed it up after I sponsored that bill.
“NAUB is assented to by the then president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and therefore is a law, and only another law can repeal or subsume it to become another institution or faculty as the case may be,” he said.
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