Reps fault Navy’s acquisition of foreign projects

The House of Representatives Committee on Navy has expressed displeasure with the Nigerian Navy for arbitrarily acquiring foreign platforms without the knowledge of the parliament.

This is even as the Committee at its meeting on Monday in Abuja said that the naval authorities failed to respond to its letters demanding documents to facilitate effective oversight of its activities.

The Chairman of the Committee, Yusuf Gagdi, said these while addressing reporters after a closed-door meeting with the leadership of the Nigerian Navy, during an oversight visit in Abuja.

“We cannot say anything now until we have gone to see those projects, the platforms that are being built. Then, we can come back here, and have another interaction,” Gagdi said.

The Plateau lawmaker also expressed displeasure with the Nigerian Navy over its handling of a case involving one of its personnel, Seaman Haruna Abbas, leading to his dismissal after six years in detention.

Abbas was allegedly held in detention for a period without trial over some disciplinary issues.

As a result, his wife cried out through a popular Abuja radio programme, Brekete Family Radio and Television aired on Human Rights Radio.

This sparked wide condemnation before the Navy tried and subsequently dismissed him from service.

Gagdi said “We came for an oversight function. You all know every committee has the Constitutional power of oversight. We came here to ask questions on taxpayers’ money and how monies appropriated to the Navy are being spent.

“We came to ask questions on how interventions by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are being spent by the Navy, how the junior officers are being treated by the senior officers, including the famous case of Seaman Haruna and how he was suddenly dismissed. It is our responsibility on behalf of the Nigerian people to ask questions on these pertinent issues.

“Beyond the Seaman Abbas issue, we are not satisfied with the non-response to letters written by this committee, for documents demanded to guide us in our oversight function and so on, and the acquiring foreign platforms without the knowledge of this committee, and so many things.”

Earlier in his earlier remarks, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, told the committee that the Navy was facing several challenges.

Ogalla said such challenges include but are not limited to “inadequate resources to effectively carry its operations.”

He added that beyond its military responsibility, the Navy also performs the function of policing the waterways, complementing the Nigeria Customs which has no deep-sea policing capacity.