The Senate Committee on Police Affairs has offered explanations on what was termed a rowdy budget defence session by the Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokun, on Friday.
The report of a rowdy session followed the decision of the Senate Deputy Chief Whip, Senator Onyekachi Nwebonyi, to stage a walkout.
Nwebonyi had complained about not being provided with a copy of the presentation made by Egbetokun to flow as it was being read.
But explaining what transpired at the session, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, Senator Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallamadori, said there was nothing rowdy or tense at the budget defence of the IGP before the Joint Committees on Police Affairs and Police Institutions at the National Assembly Complex.
Rather, Mallamadori said the IGP made a presentation which members clearly understood and are in sympathy with.
They have accordingly promised to make a case to the Committee on Appropriation for improved funding for the Nigerian Police, he said.
In the statement clarifying the event, the senator explained that it is the normal thing to come through a motion to intervene during such a presentation but that if, for any reasons, such a motion is defeated or overruled, it ends there.
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“That cannot be the basis of any successful and meaningful protest afterwards,” he said.
According to the Senate Committee Chairman, it was unanimously decided that the IGP should summarise his presentation since every member of the Joint Committee already had the full complement of the presentation and since there were many agencies within the Nigerian Police establishment also defending their budget before the Committee.
Mallamadori said in the statement on Saturday: “There were therefore no grounds for any protests against what was transpiring to warrant the use of the word tension to describe the proceedings.
“A possible misinterpretation of the consensus and a walkout by a single member does not constitute anything tense or rowdy.
“The Committee has heard the IGP loud and clear and would make a case to the appropriate quarters on the requests of the Nigeria Police in terms of budgetary resources that can make it add value to national security provisioning.”
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