Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, said yesterday that the military had been reluctant to fully engage bandits terrorizing the country, especially in the North-West, for fear of being dragged before the International Criminal Court, ICC.
The governor also raised alarm over financial resources available to terror rings in the country, saying they are enough to destabilise the country.
He said preliminary investigations had revealed that some security operatives were working for terrorists.
Governor el-Rufai stated these when he featured on the weekly ministerial press briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said while he campaigned for bandits to be classified as terrorists, there were some pushbacks on the ground that they do not have a recognized leadership structure.
He however expressed delight over the court ruling, which recently declared the bandits as terrorists and therefore made them “a fair game.”
According to him, to deal with the criminality permanently, there must be a simultaneous ground and air attacks in all the states hosting the criminals to prevent them from escaping.
The Kaduna State governor said the locations of the terrorists are known, adding that they must be wiped out at once rather than the present piecemeal approach if the problem must be solved.
He said the Fulanis involved in criminality would never abandon the business on their own because, as they make far more money from it than they would have made from legitimate cattle business.
He said: “I am persuaded that the insurgency in the North-West is far more serious than Boko Haram, both in terms of the numbers of the people affected. I have shown you the numbers in Kaduna. I can assure you that the numbers in Zamfara, and Katsina are up to three times, if they are keeping tabs. The numbers in Sokoto, Niger, and Kebbi will be about this.
“We are talking of tens of thousands of people getting killed, getting kidnapped. It is far more serious than Boko Haram. The only thing is that these guys don’t occupy territories, they are in the forests and ungoverned spaces.
“So, they do not attract the kind of single-minded attention that Boko Haram does, and because Boko Haram’s ideology is religious, intentionally religious, it elicits more passion but really, this is a far more serious problem.
“Because, this is a situation largely in which people of about the same ethnicity, same religion are killing each other, stealing each other’s property, creating an industry out of criminality. It’s very, very serious and it requires single minded attention.
“Yes, we know where these bandits are, we have the maps. But somebody has to go in and kill them. I can’t do that. If that somebody doesn’t have enough men, doesn’t have enough fire power, doesn’t have technology, no one is going to commit suicide.”
