Presidential directive on military farming: C’ttee meets Defence Minister, CDS

By Christiana Ekpa

House of Representatives Committee on Defence will be meeting with the Minister of Defence, Abubakar Badaru and the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa find how the military plan to carry out the presidential directives to the Armed Forces to ensure that all the land they have is cultivated.
The Chairman of Committee, Benson who stated this when he spoke with journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, thanked President Bola Tinubu for mandating the Armed Forces to also put farming in the front burner to ensure that all the land they have should be cultivated for farming.
He said: “If there is food security, insecurity will go down. So the Army takes possession lets say they have 1 million hectares somewhere, there is not going to be insecurity, is going to be manned by the military.
“So we are taking initiative by next week (Monday) we are going to call the Minister of Defence, Chief of Defence Staff to come and explain to us how they want to transform Mr President’s directives into reality. Let the armed forces who protect us, all the vast land (they have) let them go and cultivate it.
Hon. Benson also hailed President Tinubu for ensuring that there is local autonomy, saying the development will help in addressing insecurity in the country as security starts from the grassroots and with the autonomy, local government council chairmen will have more funds to develop their areas and secure lives as well as properties.
The lawmaker representing Ikorodu Federal Constituency of Lagos State stressed that the financial autonomy to local government would spur development and close ungoverned spaces which induced insecurity.
“I I give super kudos to the President of Nigeria for ensuring that there is local government autonomy because security starts from grassroots. So, if you empower a local government to have full receipt of their monthly applications, they don’t have immunity like the governors and people are aware that now the shackles are broken, I don’t think there will be any stretch or space in Nigeria that will not be governable.
“When I received report from my military people they tell us that there are a lot of ungovernable spaces, they are areas where no single government presence is existing. These will be made aware that this local government that is next to border or whatsoever has received so much money. So, it also behoves on the people to be wise in choosing people that administer them because if you do that, this is a game changer in my opinion.
“There will competition amongst local governments, there will be a spur to develop if they receive their full money and people will be moving from one local government to the other because these local government chairmen can concentrate on his campaign promise, some can be water, some can be infrastructure, some can be housing, some can be medical, some can have super fire service, some can have schools, different things. I think it is a game changer that can be catalytic for Nigeria’s development,” he said.
He also elaborated on his motion in which the House asked the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission(FCCPC), to immediately halt the unfair business practices against Air peace, Dangote and other businesses by certain foreign businesses operating in Nigeria.
“I moved the motion, my intention was to ensure that there is fairness, justice, good conscience in doing business in Nigeria. It will be very unfair if there are conspiracies by foreign companies to undermine Nigerian companies. What we frowned against is these companies coming together to offer predatory prices that are below the market rates in order to edge out Nigerian own enterprises.
“These practices they do not do it in their own countries. It can stiffle Nigerian businesses by reducing their prices and then they jerk up the prices. So it is speculated that this happened against Air Peace. At some points, tickets from Lagos to London were selling as high as N4 million. All of a sudden, a local company came in and all these companies just dropped prices lower than what Air Peace was offering. So, you ask yourself, why this sudden drop is this sudden dropped aim to undermine or get Air Peace out of it and once Air Peace is out of it, the prices go up. There is also a flip side that at end of day Air Peace can also be added to that cartel.