The Federal Government has been urged to do more to secure States like Kaduna and Zamfara to stop the bloodshed going on in both areas.
Arms Proliferation Expert, Darlington Umoru, made this call while speaking to Veronica Dan-Ikpoyi, on TVC News Breakfast Show.
Mr Umoru said the issue needs serious attention from government and partnership to ensure that the activities of bandits does not rebound following recent successes recorded by the Ministry.
He commended the Nigerian Military for the successes recorded so far in its campaign against bandits, Terrorists and Other sundry criminals across the Country.
He however called for a concentration of troops and Intel in Kaduna, Zamfara and Other hotspots owing to the seeming slow return of the activities of the bandits following months of lull after military marching orders by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He also advised the Federal Government to synergise with neighbouring countries and States to ensure the reduction of the proliferation of small arms in Nigeria and reduce violence.
He added that the government also needs to do something fast about the Economy to ensure that people who are currently involved in criminality have a n alternative source of income.
According to him, this will help in ensuring people give up crime and return to the Society.
“i think we are making gains considering the fact that if we want to go historically even before 2015, i think this year we have had a lot of respite, there have been a lot of aerial bombardments of the bandits, the Tucanos were deployed and Other fighter Jets too, the mop up was also done, this led to the large movement of the Terrorists to neighbouring countries with one of the Countries raising an alarm to say that their country was being infiltrated by terrorists and that was after the President gave the marching orders to the Terrorists that by December this thing should be expunged”
“It is not enough to just speak, Terrorism has come to stay and cannot be expunged totally, it can only be brought down to its barest minimum because the network is almost global especially with some parts of the world where it is sponsored and then pushed to so many places”
“Yes whether we are going to get respite like you rightly said in your intro before now like a couple of months ago, the news about the activities of bandits and terrorists, i don’t even want to be separating them, they have all been branded Terrorists, before now we have had some measure of respite, reports about Killing, reports about Kidnap all of that when Irabor himself took over certain responsibilities himself, remember the case of negotiations with the train kidnappers, after Irabor set up a committee that carried out its own job, those people were released and up until now nobody has told us how it went but i am not interested in how it went just that their is peace and tranquility for them, they have returned to their families”
“As we speak now the government is working on how to return the Train movement between Abuja-Kaduna now, but now that they are resurfacing, if that is what we are saying, it means we have had respite at a point in time, my challenge is Kaduna is one of the states in the Northwest, i think after the achievement, after the aerial bombardment and the mopping up of the Terrorists in Kaduna by Troops, i think measures should have been put in place to checkmate the activities of the terrorists”
“In times of crisis, in terms of security, particularly Kaduna South where you have the Christians, sometimes all of these activities are carried out by all of these characters, Kaduna has been peculiar now in terms of killings, Hausas and Fulanis and all sort, overtime in Kaduna South has not responded to all the issues, their is supposed to be a synergy between the Federal Government and the State Government, the Security situation in Kaduna State should be intense by now, i tell you i was in Kaduna and the fear in the State particularly in the suburbs is so high, the terrorists are shown their resolve even attacking military formations”
“They even had the guts to go into the Nigerian defence Academy to abduct a senior Military officer aside killing another though the Military have been able to hit back and get their man, but at this point in time, i think their should be concentration of the Military and Intel in Kaduna to monitor the activities of some of these Terrorists who are regrouping to launch reprisal attacks, From what they have suffered, they suffered a lot of blows from the last time, some of them were arrested, some were killed in action but even so, how are they regrouping gradually, i don’t understand it, the Federal Government particularly around 2023 should do something, this should even go to Irabor”
“We have the personnel, we have the capacity to do more but what we do not understand is what is actually the problem, for once when they were deployed, the challenge of aerial bombardments is that some of these terrorists’ use Kidnapped victims are used as human shield by them it becomes handclapped knowing that they have human shields unless you want to hit the Terrorists and victims at the same time, it is now the job of the troops on the ground who are supposed to do the mop up but otherwise, like the one that happened in Zamfara, its more a case of using the people as human shields, they are also intelligent, they have people who draw up plans for them, they don’t just go out and kidnap people, i was here to advise the Federal Government on what to do to prevent any casualty and i think some of the things we said was adopted by the Federal Government to get them all alive”
“Otherwise if you want to use force at such times, they would put the students forward and they will just start receiving bullets on their bodies, it is delicate, it is a serious thing but that of Kaduna baffles me, the war may not be completely over immediately because Kaduna has become the Hub of the bandits, the crisis has been there before the bandits moved in, from the results, the thing got to a peak where it almost became an everyday thing until the Military waded in, what we got was a slow down in the activities of the bandits, the government may not have rested but you know this people adopt guerilla tactics, they attack and run and they moved in groups to attack and run, the way they arrange themselves may not be exactly like they did from reports after the attacks, some of these group divided themselves and attack communities simultaneously and attack under the banner of one group, Kaduna State needs more attention, again the Nigerian Army is over stretched”
“The Police is also involved in this but it is not something you leave to the Police, every other security agency is involved in this, the military is over stretched not because they don’t have personnel but because evry agency has its role and the roles are like what you call divison of Labour”
” The role they play is different what they do is asynergy but we cannot come on air to say everythin because the enemies are also listening to what we are saying, we have to be careful, i have degfined what ambush mean severally at different fora, we also need to look at the activities of the Military, the Military are brought in at almost all breakdown of Law and Order, so we need to look at that”
“In all crisis situation, the military is moving from one point to the other and we have informants for these people and that is a major problem, what they are doing is not easy, they are doing a lot of things at the same time, we must all support the military with information, Security is the business of everybody and we should all see it as our duty”
“Zamfara has been the hub of kidnapping and despite several efforts it has not stopped not because the measures are not working, its working but it will be completely difficult to stop, the government has put no fly zone over Zamfara, including shutting down communications and all of that but these things like illegal gold mining and stuff like that are fuelling the crisis”.
“Kaduna State just destroyed some small arms and i think the efedera governmment and agencies should concentrate on stopping the proliferation of small arms, even the United Nations, in terms of mopping up small arms”
” We should do more to find alternative means of survival for some of the people bearing these arms, the Economy has not been of help either, some of the people bearing arms are not happy with it but we need to tackle the main issue, poverty has led so many youg people to become recruits for Boko Haram, Bandits aside from the bandits, we need to arrest the blacksmiths who are making some of these guns and let them face the wrath of the Law, some of them have gone sophisticated so much that they can make replicas of factory manufactured guns, te only thing is they may not have a serial number, our porous borders too”
“The question we need to ask is how do these non state actors get weapons, some of the imported weapons by States also disappear into the wrong hands especially from bad eggs within procuring countries”
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