By Aaron Ossai and Disun Amosun
The House of Representatives Monday promised to assist the Nigerian Army through adequate and timely budgetary provisions to tackle insecurity challenges affecting the country.
Committee Chairman Rep. Aminu Balele (APC-Katsina state)who made the pledge during the 2025 budget defence added that security needs are as complex as they are time-bound and as such must be attended to with dispatch
Speaking to journalists after a closed door session with the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.- Gen. Olufemi Oluyede, Rep. Balele said the committee was satisfied with the army’s 2024 budget performance, having shown prudence and over.
He said, “We are committed to providing unwavering support, fostering cooperation, and maintaining solidarity with our military counterparts.”’
“Rest assured, this committee’s determination to champion the welfare of our troops, ensure adequate power provisions, and promote capacity building at all levels remains steadfast.
“Today we have achieved a lot in the sense that we have analyzed and scrutinized the 2024 budgets and more importantly before we move into 2025 we ask so many fundamental questions, particularly what is happening in the country and way forward and you know this is a security committee.
“They gave us some security inputs whereby we support; we have to support them to see that in the next in a short of time they have addressed the question of this insecurity largely in all over the country”, he said.
Speaking on the Army’s 2024 budget performance he said that the Committee was satisfied with their submission as regards implementation.
He said, “In terms of implementation it was excellent. They have achieved over 99 percent in terms of implementation and more to it we have sent our colleagues and we have gone all around the country during the oversight function.”
“We have understood largely whatever they brought is perfect and it is okay. It’s just a question of you know there is so much pressure from Nigerians. They need quick security issues. They need quick you know results of this question of insecurity which is affecting our nation.
“We have seen how we have succeeded in improving their capital and largely their overheads and there are no regular allowance because you will find a member and soldier you know collecting very little amount of money in terms of his allowance. So we compare not we sit down and we resolve those issues and it’s a gradual process””, he added.
