The Home of Representatives Committee on Navy has expressed displeasure with the Nigerian Navy for arbitrarily buying international platforms with out the data of the parliament.
That is even because the Committee at its assembly on Monday in Abuja stated that the naval authorities failed to answer its letters demanding paperwork to facilitate efficient oversight of its actions.
The Chairman of the Committee, Yusuf Gagdi, stated these whereas addressing reporters after a closed-door assembly with the management of the Nigerian Navy, throughout an oversight go to in Abuja.
“We can’t say something now till we now have gone to see these tasks, the platforms which can be being constructed. Then, we will come again right here, and have one other interplay,” Gagdi stated.
The Plateau lawmaker additionally expressed displeasure with the Nigerian Navy over its dealing with of a case involving considered one of its personnel, Seaman Haruna Abbas, resulting in his dismissal after six years in detention.
Abbas was allegedly held in detention for a interval with out trial over some disciplinary points.
In consequence, his spouse cried out via a well-liked Abuja radio programme, Brekete Household Radio and Tv aired on Human Rights Radio.
This sparked vast condemnation earlier than the Navy tried and subsequently dismissed him from service.
Gagdi stated “We got here for an oversight perform. You all know each committee has the Constitutional energy of oversight. We got here right here to ask questions on taxpayers’ cash and the way monies appropriated to the Navy are being spent.
“We got here to ask questions on how interventions by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are being spent by the Navy, how the junior officers are being handled by the senior officers, together with the well-known case of Seaman Haruna and the way he was instantly dismissed. It’s our duty on behalf of the Nigerian folks to ask questions on these pertinent points.
“Past the Seaman Abbas challenge, we aren’t happy with the non-response to letters written by this committee, for paperwork demanded to information us in our oversight perform and so forth, and the buying international platforms with out the data of this committee, and so many issues.”
Earlier in his earlier remarks, the Chief of Naval Workers, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, instructed the committee that the Navy was going through a number of challenges.
Ogalla stated such challenges embody however will not be restricted to “insufficient assets to successfully carry its operations.”
He added that past its army duty, the Navy additionally performs the perform of policing the waterways, complementing the Nigeria Customs which has no deep-sea policing capability.