TECHNOCRAT MEDIA, Katsina
Aminu Masari, governor of Katsina State says his administration will use people and technology to defeat bandits terrorising his State.
“There are two advantages that we have, numbers and technology. When you put the two together, we will restore normalcy. It is not beyond us to do that,” Masari said, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Mr Masari disclosed this at a media parley on Tuesday in Katsina, urged residents to do their best to protect their areas from bandit attacks.
“We inherited the government with the security challenges and we must end it and hand over the state to our successors without the same problem,” nothing that the Katsina government must control and dominate “our environment.”, the governor added.
Recently the Katsina government lifted the ban on telecommunication services in 10 out of the 17 LGAs amid incessant bandits’ attacks.
He commended the efforts of all security agencies, especially vigilance groups, for fighting bandits.
He noted that the vigilantes travel from one community to another with the aim of protecting the communities.
The governor also advised people to defend their communities and to also give the securities all the necessary support, especially by providing them with correct information on criminals.
Mr Masari urged the people to support vigilante groups with the necessary weapons so that they could defend them in the event of an attack.
The governor had previously said bandits must be defeated collectively in the North before 2023.
Mr Masari, who gave the assurance while signing the state’s 2022 approved appropriation bill, said no going back in the fight against bandits.
“We must prepare to fight back as individuals, to fight the bandits because they are evil and they represent evil. We should not retreat in this fight. We took over under serious threat of security in 2015, and by God’s grace we will not hand over this country to the next generation of leaders under this condition. We must restore normalcy,” Mr Masari stated.
In September, the governor who had signed a peace accord in 2016 and granted amnesty to bandits and in 2019 announced that no security agent should attack or kill bandits and cattle rustlers, insisting they should be allowed to go about their normal businesses said he was wrong and added that he had realised that bandits don’t repent.
