The Democracy Watch Initiative (DWI) has urged the federal government to declare a state of emergency in Zamfara state.
DWI, who led 27 other Non-Governmental-Organizations (NGOs), at a press conference in Abuja said the call became necessary given the regrettably alarming deterioration of the security situation in the state in the last two months.
The text of the statement which was read by DWI Spokesman, Sanusi Ali Mohammed, said: “We note that since June this year the audacious regularity of acts of violence perpetrated by the bandits and kidnappers who operate freely and at will have deteriorated with horrifying instances of women and children being raped, communities displaced, people kidnapped for ransom, citizens denied access to farmlands and many others, brutalized, traumatized and killed on a daily basis.
“Killers and other criminals appear to have sensed a paralyzing vacuum at the highest levels of leadership in the State, hunger continues stalking millions of homes. Inflation is making life difficult by the day as people are losing sources of livelihood.
“Even the State House of Assembly had expressed worries over the development, lamenting that it appears there is no government in the state owing to the disdainful way the bandits are having a field day in their killing spree.
“We call the attention of the Federal Government to the reality that only the declaration of a state of emergency can assure the people of Zamfara that they have not been abandoned at the mercy of a rampaging banditry and kidnappings by a state government that has resigned itself to live with rapists and murderers.”
