TheCable

Aminu Masari, Katsina governor, says Rabe Nasir, the state’s commissioner for science and technology, was assassinated.

TheCable had reported how the commissioner was murdered at his residence last week.

The Katsina governor spoke on the incident on Tuesday after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa.

He described the killing as an “assassination,” saying it had nothing to do with banditry.  

“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,” he said. 

“Because my commissioner was killed by an unknown assassin and not a single pin was stolen in his house, 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 the north-west states need to adopt a uniform policy in order to tackle the insecurity bedevilling the zone. 

The governor said if states continue to adopt different policies, bandits and terrorists will always get away with crimes. 

“I think what is most important for us to succeed in fighting these bandits is for all of us in the states, especially the north-western states, to take the pains and work together to make sure that we block all the loopholes,” he said.

“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.”

Masari however said the security situation in the state has improved, given the drop in the rate of crime.

“I think if we are talking about banditry, certainly we have seen some improvement; we cannot say normalcy has returned but there is an improvement,” he added.

“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.”