The All Progressives Congress (APC) Campaign Council in Kaduna State has kicked against the plan by the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Isa Ashiru, to dialogue with bandits as a solution to the insecurity bedevilling the state.
The Director of Strategic Communications of the APC campaign council, Malam Ibraheem Musa, in a statement yesterday, said Ashiru had poor understanding of insecurity and how to tackle it.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ashiru said during a chat with ARISE TV on his party’s chances of winning Saturday’s governorship and Houses of Assembly elections that to properly tackle banditry and kidnapping in the state, his government would dialogue with the criminals.
He said, “We have to engage these people involved in banditry and kidnapping. They are people living among us. People are thinking that they are monsters; they are not. We can sit with them, discuss and bring this menace to an end.
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“The problem in Kaduna is disturbing. Come to Kaduna and see. People are not sleeping with their eyes closed. If we really want to get this (banditry) out of our society, there has to be an engagement with these people to make sure that whatever their problem is, is addressed.”
But the APC reminded the PDP governorship candidate that the federal government had formally declared bandits as terrorists in the Terrorism (Prevention) Proscription Order Notice 2021 which was contained in Volume 108 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette.
The APC said, “The only way to deal with them is to treat them in the language that they understand, which is to take the battle to their hideouts and attack them to submission, which our gallant armed forces are now doing.
“States which followed the ill-fated plan of negotiating with bandits and entering a peace deal with them ended up regretting it.’’
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