Former governor of Anambra State and immediate past Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has attributed the spate of insecurity across the country to the erroneous belief by state governors that security vote is pocket money for them.
Ngige said this during a chat with journalists at the sideline of the Ojoto Ofala Festival, held at the Ojoto community in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State, accusing state chief executives of using security votes for purposes outside its intention.
Insisting that security vote is not pocket money for state governors, Ngige said, “Security votes are meant to be spent by state governors to stabilise security in their different states. Security votes are not pocket money, but some governors have converted them to personal money.
“It is meant to maintain the security equilibrium of their states or homeland. For instance, the governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo, is trying on security. But I have told him to do more.
“Security is like information, publicity, when you are spending money on publicity, you won’t see it, it is not tangible, but you will see the effect. If you put stability in your security, you will see prosperity following it, because there will be economic activities.
“Insecurity has made economic activities to be destabilised in the South-East zone in the past 18 months, coupled with the sit-at-home; and all these activities by non-state actors who hide under the camouflage of Nnamdi Kanu to perpetrate criminality.”
“Our governor in Anambra is trying. He has infrastructural challenge, like construction of roads, but I will advise him to also focus on maintenance culture, just like prevention in medicine. If you prevent a disease, you don’t spend much money, as you would do in curing the disease. If you maintain the roads, they will last another 10 years. The ones I constructed when I was governor 20 years ago are still serving the people.”
