Mercenaries Will Help Tackle Banditry, Terrorism – Hon Monguno

The Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Hon Tahir Monguno, Member representing Marte/Monguno/Nganzai federal constituency Borno State has reiterated the need to bolster up the security architecture with mercenaries in order to bring the issues of banditry, insurgency and terrorism to nought.

In a chat with Informavores’ Ogechi Okorie, Hon Tahir Monguno talked about the just concluded APC convention, concerns for security, his constituency projects among other things.

The excerpts:

Honourable, some people were of the opinion that people were coerced into agreeing on a consensus in the just concluded APC convention. What is your take on that?

Being part and parcel of the process, and being one of the leaders of the party, I can assure you that nobody was coerced into accepting any consensus arrangement. In the first place, the positions were zoned into various geographical political zones and the geo political zones were asked to go and meet and then come up with names that they have agreed for each office that was allocated to them. it was based on this, (for example, the North Eastern part of the country, were given the position of deputy Chairman North. So all the leaders from the North Eastern part of the country met under the leadership of the Senate president and then decided to allocate to the various sets all the offices that were allocated to the North East zone e g We gave Adamawa State the position of Vice Chairman North East while Borno was given the deputy National Chairman North and then in Borno, haven been given that position of deputy National Chairman North, we agreed to give Senator Abubakar Kyari to occupy that position while Adamawa that was given the position of Vice Chairman North East, sat down and agreed on a particular candidate so that is how all the consensus candidates emerged.

Nobody was coerced and nobody was forced to withdraw his contest for a particular position. Everything was done under their freewill and under their own volition. Nobody was forced to withdraw.

So it is purely a consensus arrangement having zoned the offices to various geo political zones and then the geo political zones met and micro zoned these offices to various states. That is how the leadership emerged.

Honourable, with the rate of insecurity and the general situation of the country right now, what do you think are the chances of APC come 2023 election?

The chances APC winning at all level, whether the state Houses of Assembly, the Governorship, the National Assembly and most importantly, the presidency, I assure you that APC will continue to maintain its winning streak against the backdrop of the various developmental programs that APC has embarked upon and also the various programs like N-Power,  SUBEB, MARKETMONI, TRADERMONI etc and all the programs that directly impart on the lives of people and based on these programs, I am convinced that APC is still going to form a Federal government and retains its majority in the National Assembly.

It is obvious we have serious challenges especially with regards to security but again, government is not lying on it’s oars. We are doing everything possible to address the situation just like government dealt with Boko Haram insurgency in the North East to the extent that it has drastically reduced.

I believe government will continue doing everything possible to make sure that the problems we are having in the North Central and North West will also be tackled head-on in the way and manner that it tackled Boko Haram insurgency was tackled in the North East.

Honourable, it seems Nigeria is on a time bomb. Not too long ago, a train was attacked in Kaduna and is in this vein that Governor El-Rufai suggested the use of mercenaries to fight terrorists, Because it seems, every effort made by the federal government has not yielded any result. 

Do you think hiring of mercenaries will solve the problem of terrorist activities in Nigeria.?

Before now, I advocated for recruitment of mercenaries to assist in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency and during the time of Goodluck Jonathan, mercenaries were deployed in the fight against insurgency in the North East and I have consistently supported the idea of recruiting mercenaries. At this juncture the Nigerian military are overstretched. Ordinarily all these functions that are being done by the military, are supposed to be done by the police.

Their duty is to defend the territorial integrity of this country, but now that they are fighting insurgency in the North East, North West, North central and practically everywhere, and i am of the opinion that we should seriously consider the idea of recruiting mercenaries to aide in the fight against banditry, insurgency and all forms of criminality.

Honourable, i am aware this is your record 5^th time in the House of Representatives, what have endeared you to your people in order for you to achieve this feat?

I will simply say it is the grace of God because power is from God. He gives to whom ever he wishes. Secondly you should be closer to your people and should always identify with their problems. You should be responsive and responsible to their yearnings and aspirations and try as much as possible, to resonate with that. That is the secret. Try the much you can to bring dividends of democracy to them, identify with them, empathise with them.

Honourable, Informavores gathered that you did a massive Constituency outreach some months ago in your constituency in Borno State. Can you put through some of the projects you executed?

I had series of trainings and empowerment programs and this was initiated against the backdrop of the fact that my constituency is one of the constituencies that was ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency and also our governor was determined to return our people back to their respective constituencies and the gallantry display by the military of liberating these places from the strong hold of Boko Haram and as a result of this, our people have started going back to their respective communities and as a result, there is need to empowerment so that by the time they go back to their communities, they will pick back the pieces of their lives.

So I embarked upon this empowerment programs to help them get back on their feet. I also did a training on various aspects of Agriculture, Aquaculture etc.

A lot of infrastructure were destroyed as a result of activities of insurgents and I am constructing a big water works worth(560,000 000) five hundred and sixty million naira each in 2 local governments to provide water to the inhabitants of the 2 local governments particularly, the local government headquarters.

I also constructed clinics, schools etc just to bring about normalcy back to the lives of the people.