He made the request when he appeared before the Senate Committees on FCT and Area Councils on Monday to defend the N1.1 trillion budget of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) for the 2024 fiscal year.
There have been more kidnappings, armed robberies, and killings of innocent residents in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) lately.
In order to guarantee that security agencies eliminate threats without having to go through the arduous procedures of official bureaucracy, which can impede action and reveal sensitive security information, Wike said that approving the security vote for the FCTA was essential.
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He said, “If you recollect what we said in the Security Council meeting, I did say that in tackling the issue of insecurity, there are certain operations that we call covert operations and that even some people may not even know. But here in Abuja or FCT, no security man can be given N10,000.
“He has to apply. You have to take it to the permanent secretary, who will take it to the DFA (Director of Finance and Accounts) before the money will be released. Now, in that case, you don’t even know whether it is the permanent secretary or the DFA that is giving out information regarding the operation.
“There is no security vote in the FCT and so, I did present this when we discussed security issues. This is just to let you know, so you don’t forget that you did promise us that you would make sure that this time around, there would be a security vote to take care of some of these challenges.”
The minister also discussed how he was able to reduce the operations portion of the Abuja light rail contract from $128 million to $75 million, saving a total of $53 million.
Speaking about the postponement or abandonment of public projects, Wike clarified that the majority of contracts with the government were “inflated.”
He said he made the decision to use Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to partially fund certain projects in order to thwart contractors’ and their allies’ “plots” to exploit any chance for variation while waiting for the main capital budgets to be released.
