Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina has said that those opposing or criticising President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval of $1billion dollars for security funding are only playing politics with the lives of Nigerians.
Adesina, who is also the president’s special adviser on media and publicity, responded to the PDP’s condemnation of the approval in a special interview on Channels Television on Thursday night, saying proper procedures for the release of the fund were being followed.
According to him, the president will soon communicate to the National Assembly through the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly matters about the matter.
He said: “As we speak now the communication to the National Assembly is about ready. Those who have been flexing muscles over the matter should just have bothered to make inquiries from the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly matters.
“If they had inquired they would have been told that the communication would soon be on the way to the National Assembly.
“Talking about the timing, there is no timing that is not good for security. Every time is security time. Those who are reading political meaning into it is just unfortunate they play politics with everything and they will play politics with the very lives of Nigerians, which is very bad.’’
He dismissed the insinuation that the amount was too huge to be spent only on security matters, saying no government could quantify the amount of funds being expended on security as no individual or government could quantify the value of human lives.
“It is not something that I think any government could begin to disclose. But we know that it is expensive. I remember that the Chief of Army Staff spoke about some trillions of naira recently – security is expensive but human life is much, much expensive,’’ he added.
(NAN)
