Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State has said all states in the North-West geo-political zone need to work together to address the security challenges affecting the region.
He said this while responding to questions from State House Correspondents after he led a delegation of elders from his State to a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
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The elders included Senator Abba Ali (Classmate of the President), Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, Senator Mamman A. Danmusa, Alh Nalado Y. Sarkin Sudan and Alhaji Amhmed Yusuf.
According to Masari, “I think what is most important for us to succeed in fighting these bandits is for all of us the States, especially the North-western States to take the pains and work together to make sure that we block all the loopholes.
“But if one State has a policy and another has a different one, certainly they (Bandits) will always be moving from one State to another. Luckily enough, we are already working closely with States that border us, like Nasarawa and Niger, to bring the problem to a manageable and tolerable level.”
On the recent killing of one of his Commissioners, Masari said the incident had nothing to do with banditry, describing it as a pure assassination case.
The governor assured the family of the deceased and citizens of the State that security agents are working hard to unravel the cause of the murder.
“The incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry attack it was purely an assassination by unknown killers, which the Police and other security agencies are working round the clock to unravel what happened.”
“Because my Commissioner was killed by an unknown assassin and not a single pin was stolen in his house so, you could see that this was a pure crime that has to be fully investigated for us to know the root causes and why,” he said.
Masari, however, said there is an improvement with the measures put in place by security agencies.
“I think if we are talking about banditry, certainly we have seen some improvement; we cannot say normalcy has returned but there is improvement.
“When we had a comparative analysis before the issuance of the security containment order, what we saw in three months when we compared, was a drastic drop of over 100 percent in terms of the rate of kidnappings, killings and their associated crimes with banditry. So, the incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry,” he said.
Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto state, on Monday, called on Buhari to declare a full scale state of emergency in all areas where criminals are domiciled.
This, according to Tambuwal, who met with Buhari at the Presidential villa, for about 30 minutes, would enable the Armed Forces to carry out their operations without let or hindrance in all enclaves affected by the declaration.
These operations, once conceived and ready for execution, “should be carried out simultaneously in the states where the terrorists have strongholds, such as , Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger and Kebbi; as well as elsewhere, where the criminals have hideouts,” he said.
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