A village head collected N700,000 from bandits to allow them free access to attack his community. This was disclosed by Katsina State Governor, Dr Umaru Dikko Radda.
Recall
that, months ago, Radda described banditry as a business venture for some
highly placed individuals in the country.
He has
now disclosed how a village head and other locals benefit from banditry.
The
governor told Saturday Vanguard that a village head was paid N700,000 by
bandits, to allow free access to his village, and the consequent killing of
about 30 of his subjects.
He
added that for as little as N2,000, some persons would volunteer information to
bandits about their neighbours or relatives.
On the
village head, the governor said; “I will say yes, that we have arrested a
village head in Guga village in Bakori local government of the state because of
his involvement with the bandits.
“He was given N700,000 to allow bandits access
into his village to kill over 30 people.
“The government deployed so many approaches
but the notable ones are the kinetic and non-kinetic approaches and within,
there are tangible approaches that have gone a long way in tackling security
problems”.
Gov. Radda
who said some of his statements had been misrepresented, said; “I hold the
security agencies in high esteem because they too are being killed daily in
their pursuit to curb the insecurity in the state. But the point is, there is
no set category of people who are not involved in this. What are we hiding
here? Who was not arrested? Different categories of people were arrested on
allegations of being involved in banditry, criminality, and many other vices
even here in Katsina.
“I don’t know why people should be bothering
themselves with why I said this other than the fact that some people want to
fuel it. I still maintain that different categories of people, whether in
government or anywhere, are involved. That is because there are several arrests
and security reports we have. Even in prisons now, you will see the people we
arrested from the security operatives, government officials, and traditional
rulers.
“But the issue we should understand is that we
have bad eggs, good people everywhere, but we can’t get away from the bad ones,
and bad eggs are with us. Why should we be here and then you hear the
information from the discussion we had after an hour or 30 minutes? Someone
from those people who attended the meeting must have leaked the information.
“You must ask yourself who told them that. It
is not rocket science but logic. We don’t want to tell the truth because we
don’t want to get to the root of the problem. We are shielding ourselves from
the consequences of wrongdoing. We must tell ourselves the truth. We have to
examine ourselves. No organization doesn’t have bad eggs in it. We should deal
with it so that we get out of it.
“But, when we keep hiding things that we don’t
want to blackmail, it continues and there will be no time that it will end. So,
it is high time we told ourselves the truth. When we do that, we will correct
it. Somebody can challenge me for doing something wrong, and that may be the
basis for my correction. Why should we be hiding things from ourselves? And
that is one of the major problems affecting this country”, he said.
On how
far his administration has been able to tackle insecurity in the state, Dr
Radda said 35 bandits were neutralized by the state joint security taskforce in
the last year.
At the
same time, 363 bandits were arrested and subjected to the state’s fair judicial
system, while 565 kidnap victims were successfully rescued.
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