Olowu of Owu Kuta Oba Ahmed Oyelude Makama Tegbosun 111, has harped on the need for Federal government to increase the budgetary allocations for defense and autonomy for local governments in other to overcome in insecurity challenges been faced in the country .
The foremost monarch who maintained that management of security in a country like Nigeria goes beyond government alone said citizens should also be patriotic and do what is right.
Speaking at the South West Group of Online Publishers SWEGOP breakfast meeting in Ibadan, Oba Makama said the service chiefs are competent and result oriented but Nigerians need to cooperate with them in ensuring safety of lives and properties.
According to him, the local government administration should be strengthened and given autonomy, if the local government lack autonomy we will still not get to the root cause of Insecurity in the country, all security issue are local, gone are the day when the local government have absolute autonomy, just like the native authority.
“In all 774 local government that we have in this country, we have a DPO,SSS officer Civil Defense and we have traditional ruler , intelligence gathering and sharing would be easier at that level and funding of those intelligence would be easier if the local government are autonomous
The monarch added that “Our annual budget is too low, we have been battling insurgency and banditry for close to seventeen years now, countries in Africa that are not at war spend war on peace and security, we that we are even at war are spending lower, every reasonable country, that want to be at peace will spend more on defense and security, our defense budget is too low, defense encompasses the armed forces , paramilitary and others so the budget is too low, by the time you convert the defense budget to dollars you will see that there is little it can afford because the weapon that needed to be purchase in the foreign market’
“We as citizen show stop politicizing security issues, insecurity knows neither the APC nor PDP, so we should always try to be a good citizen of this country. when you go England o Europe when people see strange faces in their domain they ring the police but here we keep quiet once we are not directly affected so we should strive hard to be a patriotic citizens
Some of us we obey law when we are outside the shore of this country but in our country we don’t want to obey because we feel above the law
Traditional rulers should be given the right role to play they have been stiffened, they are on no budget other that what general Abacha approved , 5 percent of the allocation for traditional rulers, this is too low and I think it should be reviewed so that traditional rulers will also have resources to fund intelligence gathering and security in their domain.
