Fred Itua, Abuja

Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, yesterday, said the attack on the Senate on Wednesday, was an indictment of security agencies in the country. He added that, it is another lesson on the need to rethink the nation’s security structure.

Ekweremadu spoke when he received the leadership of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA), which paid a solidarity visit to the Senate.

He said: “It is an embarrassment to Nigeria before the international community for someone to drive all the way into the National Assembly Complex, enter the hallowed chamber, and cart away its symbol of authority.  “It shows a breakdown of security and it is a setback to Nigeria’s drive for foreign investment because no one would be ready to invest money in such a system. So, it is a lesson that we cannot keep doing the same thing with our security system and expect a different result.

“It is also an irony that the people involved would organise armed bandits to rob the Senate of its mace since they understand the implication of what they have done.  As a parliament, we will ensure that this does not happen again and insist that all the actors behind the drama are brought to book”.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 42 registered political parties, under the aegis of Committee of Concerned Political Parties, has condemned Wednesday’s invasion of the upper chambers by armed thugs, who took away the mace, just as it described as, unwarranted, attacks on the INEC by politicians ahead of 2019 general elections. This is just as the coalition said they are not happy with the recent moves by the National Assembly to undermine the efforts of the INEC, describing it as the wrong political moves. They  said the group would work with INEC to ensure the mobilisation of voters and cleaning up of the voters register.

Addressing newsmen yesterday in Abuja, the leader of the 42 registered political parties, Onwubuya Breatfortth, also described the attack as shameful and unacceptable. He said the group condemn in totality the attack as antidemocratic.

Onwubuya, who further described the unfortunate incident as democracy in danger called on the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to bring to book those who masterminded the attack and  also the officers in charge of security at the National Assembly.

The group, which decried the decay in the national security, asked the security agencies to brace up to the challenge of securing the country.

Disclosing their plans to field a consensus presidential candidate in 2019, he said, “we are not forming a new political party, ‎but we are going to field and support only one presidential candidate. We are talking with different stakeholders and political parties including the PDP”, he said.

He also called on the federal government to ‎probe the killings nationwide and bring culprits and their sponsors to book.