![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot_20250115-111827_1-300x246.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
George Mgbeleke (Abuja )<\/p>\n
There was confusion at a 2025 budget defence session on Thursday at the National Assembly as lawmakers tried to make sense from the details of last year\u2019s budget of the Nigeria Police Force<\/p>\n
Trouble started when the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, was giving a breakdown of funds used for the construction of 5 zonal Police headquarters in the country.<\/p>\n
Egbetokun had barely started his presentation when a member of the House of Representatives, Mark Esset from Akwa Ibom interjected – questioning why the details of what the IGP read is not contained in the document given to him.<\/p>\n
But it was Senator Onyekachi Nwebonyi – a member of the All Progressives Congress and Principal Officer that turned on the heat, insisting that as a senator he should have the appropriate copy of what the IGP dished out to them.<\/p>\n
Nwebonyi said: \u201cWe are here to serve Nigerians and Nigerians should see us as a very serious institution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not against the presentation of the IGP. But I, as the Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, should have what the IGP is reading.\u201d<\/p>\n
All efforts to explain his intention were thwarted by shouts and rowdiness which apparently led Nwebonyi\u2019s anger to rapidly grow more intense after his Point of Order was overruled by the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs, Honourable Abubakar Makki Yalleman to allow the IGP continue with his presentation.<\/p>\n
With his anger at boiling point, Nwoebonyi took his belongings and stormed out of the budget defence exercise, but as he did, he kept exchanging hot words with mostly House of Representatives members who jeered at him as he took his exit.<\/p>\n
A member of the House of Representatives, Hon Yusuf Gagdi, who represents Panshin\/Kanam\/Kanke Federal Constituency of Plateau State, was apparently disappointed at what played out even as he explained that the committee\u2019s decision to allow the IGP to continue to speak was in line with established parliamentary procedures.<\/p>\n
He adding that it is completely out of place for lawmakers to interject when they do not have the floor.<\/p>\n
When the dust simmered down – the IGP continued his presentation saying that the Police is grossly underfunded and called for the removal of the police from the \u201cenvelope\u201d budgetary system.<\/p>\n
On recruitment, Egbetokun disclosed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has increased the yearly quota from 10,000 to 30,000 and that this will greatly improve the Force\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
He urged the National Assembly to help the police deliver on its mandate \u201cotherwise we depend only on the budgetary allocation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are glad that this committee has identified the gross underfunding of the police,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Mgbeleke (Abuja ) There was confusion at a 2025 budget defence session on Thursday at the National Assembly as lawmakers tried to make sense from the details of last year\u2019s budget of the Nigeria Police Force Trouble started when the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, was giving a breakdown of funds used for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[219,779,698,23,27],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime","tag-budget","tag-confusion","tag-defence","tag-nass","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1286,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions\/1286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}