Foreign countries funding terrorism in Nigeria – Reps
NEWS DIGEST – Foreign countries are fuelling insurgency in the country, the House of Representatives Committee Chairman on Defence, Rep. Babajimi Benson has said on Wednesday.
Benson spoke with reporters immediately after a closed door meeting with Service Chiefs, alongside his colleagues chairing committees on Army, Navy, National Intelligence and Air Force .
The lawmaker, while answering questions from reporters, said that the allegation that foreign powers were arming the insurgents in a bid to destabilise the country were discussed in the closed meeting.
Answering a direct question on if insurgents were being armed by foreign governments, the lawmaker said: “Yes, like I said, that is part of the things we discussed. There could be some truth in that.
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“Military issues are not things we should discuss in public but they raised a lot of issues that we must all sit down as Nigerians and discuss.
“One of them is that there is probably an international dimension to what we see. There is ISIS, there is ISWAP. These are things that we need to discuss in a very classified manner.
“But what we want Nigerians to know is that we are committed to them 100 per cent, to see that we assist the military and the Armed Forces and ensuring that this matter is put to an end within the shortest possible time.”
Of the meeting, he said: “It went very well. We got first-hand information on what is going on and what the issues are. We deliberated extensively. We are going to report back to parliament what he heard from the service chiefs.
“We were to a large extent satisfied with what they said. Like I said, we are also going to table what they said before parliament. We are going to discuss; we are going to have a very robust discussion on how to assist, to end this war. It is Nigeria that is at war…how to end this at the shortest possible time.”
