Bala Bantex: People benefitting from insecurity don’t want it to end

Former Deputy Governor of Kaduna State, Bala Bantex, says the beneficiaries of insecurity do not want it to end.

Speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Bantex opposed the idea of the federal or state governments granting amnesty to bandits.

Respected Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, has been pushing for a dialogue with bandits as a means to seek peace.

But Bantex described the statements of non-state actors on insecurity as a mark of failure.

“Gumi’s statement is also a show of a failing situation because when non-state actors are given the privilege to talk this way, rather than talk to authority over such sensitive issues, is a mark of failure as far as I am concerned.”

“The issues Gumi is raising, some of them have touched the very core of the issue that brings about insecurity. Fortunately for him, people are battling with how to survive and they are not looking at the details of what he said.

“Negotiating with people who have destroyed the economy of thousands of Nigerians, who have made life so totally useless and who are still doing so is not ideal. There are some people sitting out there who are benefitting from this and who would not let it go in a hurry,” he said.

On President Muhammadu Buhari’s directives to service chiefs for insecurity to end in the coming weeks, he said: “If the President has passed that directive, I trust his ability to provide what the service chiefs require. I don’t want to see a situation where it is only in their exit like the former Chief of Army Staff who at one time said insurgency had become a thing of the past.”

Bantex was the deputy of Governor Nasir El-Rufai between 2015 and 2019.