Tinubu Approves Procurement of Tracking Equipment – Wike

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FCT Minister, Mr Nyesom Wike, announced President Bola Tinubu has given an approval for emergency procurement of digital tracking tools to help halt kidnapping.

Wike who disclosed this to newsmen during a media interface in Abuja said while he would not go into details, the informants recently arrested by security agencies in the territory are cooperating and offering actionable intelligence.

He stated that information obtained from the suspects had led to the arrest of some kidnappers who were paraded by the Police over the weekend.

According to him, security agencies have also been able to foil more attacks, saying the government was not sleeping. While he decried that the lack of adequate equipment in the past had led to recent unpleasant events, Wike said with the emergency procurement approval by the president, the story would now change.

“So many facilities were not provided. Vehicles for the security agencies are not there. You cannot believe it that equipment to track criminals are not there. When anything happens, they go back to the Office of the National Security Adviser or to the Force Headquarters. That is not the way it is supposed to be.

” Mr President, giving us approval for emergency procurement, we have been able to identify what each of the agencies need and we will be able now to provide them.

” Again before we came on board, the police had said that they had requested procurement of certain number of motorcycles where vehicles cannot get to- the remote and mountainous areas. Unfortunately, they were not provided but we are going to do that now. Security is not just these equipment. You also have to motivate the personnel. I don’t want to talk about the strategies because we are talking security now.

” Assuming Mr President did not approve this emergency procurement, we had been to the Bureau for Public Procurement since December to allow us to procure under emergency. If you don’t and you have to go the whole hog of the processes, it can take you two months and that is not what you tell members of the public, that procurement process is a problem.

“The next thing is to set up a joint security outfit here where they have their own structure and equipment so that if anything happens the task force will know it is their function to move in. Yes it will cost us some funds and it will take us some time hut what is important is that we have identified that this is a lacuna that we have to cover”, he stated.

The minister added that efforts of security agencies have yielded the arrests of an informants who informed them of concocted plans and skims.

He gave the assurance that everything will be done to ensure the protection of lives and properties, hence residents should suppress any state of panic.

Reporting by Tersoo Zamber; Editing by Jennifer Ogor and Tijjani Ibrahim

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