Senate faults IG on laws to tackle terrorism

The Senate has expressed shock at the pronouncement by the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, that the absence of relevant laws was stalling the prosecution  of terror suspects in the country.
Abubakar,  had at a meeting with Senior Police Officers,  in Abuja, on Tuesday declared that the police were waiting for the passage of the anti-Terrorism Bill to prosecute terror suspects.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, Enyinnaya Abaribe, expressed the the feeling of senators at a media briefing in Abuja, on Wednesday.
He said, “The Senate was really very surprised and we were, I would say, flabbergasted that the Inspector General of Police would say that there is no law or there is no anti-terrorism law.
“The Terrorism Prevention Act of 2011, was passed by the Senate and the House on June, 1, 2011 and on June 2, 2011, it was forwarded by the Clerk of the National Assembly to the President. To show how important it was, the President signed this law on June 3, 2011.
“In fact, I have a copy of the Act here. The Act makes elaborate provisions for the prevention of terrorism, for prosecuting people who have committed terrorist acts. I think that maybe the Inspector- General has not been briefed properly by his legal team.
“There is the existence of a bill that has been here for more than a year and now we are in November- a year and five months after its passage. What happened was that even on top of the bill that has already been passed, the Senate went ahead to pass an amendment of this bill and the amendment was passed on October 17 this year.”
“The amendment was merely to expand part of the provisions of that bill but everything that you need to fight the war against terrorism is already in the Act.
“We are going to make sure that we send a copy of this Act to the Inspector General of Police. We find it very difficult to believe that an arm of government will say they do not have a law that has been signed by the President more than a year ago.
“I think that there must be something wrong that is going on there. It is not true that we don’t have an anti-terrorism law. We have an anti-terrorism Act which has been passed since June and signed by Mr. President.”
Earlier, the Senate spokesperson said the Upper House passed a harmonized version of the Automative Council Bill with the hope that it would kick-start the production of a made in Nigeria cars.