Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State, on Tuesday, expressed his frustration with the Federal Government over the latter’s failure to send the killings in his state and refusing to allow him deal decisively with the situation, even after investing in equipment that can change the tide.
He spoke as a panelist on rope titled “Removing Binding Constraints to Security: The Sub-national Perspective,” at the 27th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja.
According to the Lalong, he and his colleagues have been investing heavily in the procurement of weapons and equipment for security forces, but they do not have the desired support of the Federal Government to deploy some of them to tackle the insecurity in their states.
He specifically said that after acquiring drones with which to help stave the killings, the use of such drones was refused on the basis that the state had no end-user-certificate.
READ ALSO: Plateau Killings: Security Agents Arresting Wrong Suspects – Lawmaker Alleges
His words: “In some cases, the governors will use their money to buy the equipment and technology but they will tell you that you don’t have an End-user Certificate.
“And you are waiting for an end-user certificate while your people are being killed every time.
“So these are some of these things. I thank God we are discussing security. Let there be something that we can address as quickly as possible.
“I cannot go and buy drones and keep them for three years and there is no End-user Certificate and I see my people being killed.
“Allow me to use it to address the insecurity in my state. These are the things that we are talking about.
“They call you Chief Security Officer of your state but are you the chief security officer of your state when you cannot control the total security of your state?”
End-User Certificates for the use of drones are issued by the Office of the National Security Adviser.
According to him, the governors have made recommendations on the need to urgently allow the establishment of state police, in order to rescue the country from the ranging insecurity.
According to the governor, “We have made recommendations to the President. We say look, let us sit down at the table.
“Let us set up a high powered committee of experts to sit down and look at the recommendations and see the recommendations and see the opportunity to help the governors to rescue their states.
“Otherwise we will continue to lament on some of these things that we are talking about.
“Initially we (northern state governors) were against state police. But recent events show that it is a problem. The number of police is not there.
“But to us even without having state police, half of the police expenditure is funded by the governors. We are already funding the police.”
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(VANGUARD)
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