Witness narrates how Ex-HoS, allies diverted public funds to private companies in court
Bandits should be eliminated, not compensated-El-Rufai disagrees with Gumi
By Modupe Shodeinde
The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has disgreed with the proposition that the Federal Government should dialogue with bandits rather than waging war against them.
A prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Gumi, after meeting with bandits in the forest in Zamfara State, had advised the government to address the bandits’ demand with the security budget.
According to Gumi, most of the bandits have lost all their possession to cattle rustling and extortion.
The Kaduna state governor, however, on Monday while speaking on BBC Hausa, said that the bandits should not be forgiven or compensated after killing and destroying properties.
El-Rufai stated that his administration is at war with the bandits and cannot negotiate with them. “Eliminating them is the only solution to banditry,” he said.
He also noted that because of the huge amount of money gotten from kidnapping, the bandits would be unwilling to stop the act.
“Anybody that thinks a Fulani man that ventured into kidnapping for ransom, and he is earning millions of naira, would go back to his former life of getting N100,000 after selling a cow in a year, must be deceiving himself.
“Why should they be compensated after killing people, destroying their houses. Who offended them? Ahmad Gumi is my friend and this is what we discussed with him.
“I told him that majority of these Fulani bandits don’t believe in religion. Therefore, I don’t believe in what he (Gumi) is doing that they should be forgiven and compensated.”
The governor also spoke on the disunity among governors in the North-west in the war against banditry.
He said, “As a result, every state is fighting in its own way. If we cannot come together for the federal government to provide us with soldiers and police to enter the bush and kill all the bandits, it will be difficult to succeed in the fight against banditry.
“There is no synergy among the governors in the north-west on how to end the banditry. But Kaduna is collaborating with Niger State on modalities to end the killings by the gunmen.
“State like Zamfara adopted a policy of dialogue with the gunmen, giving them amnesty, which I don’t believe in. With this, we have differences on how to tackle the situation.
El-Rufai said there was a meeting with governors in Katsina, but the governors were in dispute on how to tackle the criminality. He said some believed on dialogue, while others did not.
