APC chieftain: Military, Zamfara collaboration crucial to tackling banditry

Sani Shinkafi, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has asked the military and Zamfara government to collaborate in tackling banditry in the state.

Dauda Lawal, the governor of Zamfara, had said he could end banditry in the state in two months if he controlled security agencies.

The governor said he knows bandits’ hideouts but cannot eliminate them because security agencies receive orders from Abuja, the nation’s capital.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Shinkafi, the executive director of the Patriots for the Advancement of Peace and Social Development, called for synergy between the state and the military.

He asked security agencies to be “firm and decisive in crushing armed banditry in the state and stop untenable excuses of awaiting orders from Abuja before discharging their constitutional mandates of protecting lives and property”.

“The good people of Zamfara state have been at the mercy of armed bandits who kill, wound, abduct, rape, displace indigenes from their ancestral homes, impose levies, rustle cattle and destroy properties worth billions of naira for over a decade in the state,” the statement reads.

He said “most of these attacks could have been prevented” if security agencies worked in synergy with the Zamfara state government, which has procured advanced technology of environmental remote sensing, geographical information system (GIS), and global positioning system (GPS), which provide precise location of bandits.

“It is obvious that banditry in the state can end within two months if there is collaboration between the military and the state government to flush out these criminal elements,” he added.

“What is lacking is the political will to crush them. The Nigerian military and other paramilitary personnel are well trained and equipped, as demonstrated in their various peacekeeping operations around the world.”

The APC chieftain asked President Bola Tinubu and Christopher Musa, chief of defence staff, to “quickly intervene and ensure security, public safety and order” in Zamfara.