Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, says a situation
where security agencies only respond to incidents of banditry is unacceptable.
El-Rufai said this at town-hall meeting on security
organised by the federal government in Kaduna on Thursday.
The governor said security agencies must collaborate and
take the fight to bandits and kidnappers because the country is at war with
them.
“The situation in which the security agencies mostly only
react to cases of banditry and abduction is unacceptable,” he said.
“We are in a war with these terrorists who are challenging
the sovereignty and monopoly of the instruments of coercion of the Nigerian
state and its territory.
“Our security forces must collaborate to take the war to
them, recover and restore the un-governed forests these terrorists occupy, and
enable our law-abiding citizens to engage in their legitimate pursuits.”
The governor reiterated his position that bandits must be
“wiped out” because they have lost their right to life, going by the
constitution.
“These bandits have lost their right to life under our
constitution and must be wiped out in their entirety. There is no other way to
approach the current insurgency situation today as far as governmental action is
concerned,” he said.
According to him, the country has found itself in
“near-anarchy” because there are “too many carrots without sticks”.
“Notions of a common humanity, not to talk of a common
citizenship are not as widely or deeply shared as it would appear. Identity
politics holds sway. This reflects the absence of an elite consensus about who
we are and how we should live together,” he said.
The governor said more responsibilities should be given to
states so that the federal government is not blamed for everything that goes
wrong.
“Centralised policing in a federation is not only a
contradiction in terms,” he said.
“The state governments today bear most of the burden of the
running costs of the federal police anyway, so why not the sub-nationals of the
state police now. So I repeat my persistent call for state police as soon as
possible.
“To address the banditry prevalent in the north-west and
north-central, we must implement the national livestock transformation plan
already produced four years ago.”
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