Saturday, June 1, 2024 -A village head collected N700,000 from bandits to allow them free access to attack his community.
This was disclosed by Katsina State
Governor, Dr Umaru Dikko Radda.
Recall that, months ago, Radda described
banditry as a business venture for some highly placed individuals in the
country.
He has now disclosed how a village head and
other locals benefit from banditry.
The governor told a Saturday Vanguard that a
village head was paid N700,000 by bandits, to allow free access to his village,
and the consequent killing of about 30 of his subjects.
He added that for as little as N2,000, some
persons would volunteer information to bandits about their neighbors or
relatives.
On the village head, the governor said; “I
will say yes, that we have arrested a village head in Guga village in Bakori
local government of the state because of his involvement with the bandits.
“He was given N700,000 to allow bandits
access into his village to kill over 30 people.
“The government deployed so many approaches,
but the notable ones are the kinetic and non-kinetic approaches and within,
there are tangible approaches that have gone a long way in tackling security
problems”.
Gov. Radda who said some of his statements
had been misrepresented, said; “I hold the security agencies in high esteem
because they too are being killed daily in their pursuit to curb the insecurity
in the state. But the point is, there is no set category of people who are not
involved in this. What are we hiding here? Who was not arrested? Different
categories of people were arrested on allegations of being involved in
banditry, criminality, and many other vices even here in Katsina.
“I don’t know why people should be
bothering themselves with why I said this other than the fact that some people
want to fuel it. I still maintain that different categories of people, whether
in government or anywhere, are involved. That is because there are several
arrests and security reports we have. Even in prisons now, you will see the
people we arrested from the security operatives, government officials, and
traditional rulers.
“But the issue we should understand is that
we have bad eggs, good people everywhere, but we can’t get away from the bad
ones, and bad eggs are with us. Why should we be here and then you hear the
information from the discussion we had after an hour or 30 minutes? Someone
from those people who attended the meeting must have leaked the
information.
“You must ask yourself who told them that.
It is not rocket science but logic. We don’t want to tell the truth because we
don’t want to get to the root of the problem. We are shielding ourselves from
the consequences of wrongdoing. We must tell ourselves the truth. We have to
examine ourselves. No organization doesn’t have bad eggs in it. We should deal
with it so that we get out of it.
“But, when we keep hiding things that we
don’t want to blackmail, it continues and there will be no time that it will
end. So, it is high time we told ourselves the truth. When we do that, we will
correct it. Somebody can challenge me for doing something wrong, and that may
be the basis for my correction. Why should we be hiding things from ourselves?
And that is one of the major problems affecting this country”, he said.
On how far his administration has been able
to tackle insecurity in the state, Dr Radda said 35 bandits were neutralized by
the state joint security taskforce in the last year.
At the same time, 363 bandits were arrested
and subjected to the state’s fair judicial system, while 565 kidnap victims
were successfully rescued.
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