Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, Kaduna State Governor, on Thursday February 24, 2022 says terrorists control resources so huge and can destabilise Nigeria.
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 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.
The governor noted that the nature of terrorism that reared its head in the North-West of the country is far more vicious, with more casualties than the Boko Haram insurgency experienced in the North-East of the country.
He said some State Governors had the impression that negotiating with the criminals would end the problem but later realized that it was a mistake, revealing that North-West State Governments began a process of cooperation and co-financing the military operation against cattle rustling.
He regretted that the operation was not sustained because some of the governors backed out after some successes were recorded, only for kidnapping to take over.
On the statistics of the victims of the criminality in the area, he said in the reported cases, 937 were killed, while 1,972 were kidnapped by bandits in the state in 2020.
According to him, a total of 1,192 were killed, while 3,348 were kidnapped in 2021, which he said suggested a deterioration in the situation.
He regretted further the challenge of lack of capacity of Nigeria’s security agencies in terms of adequate personnel and equipment, stressing the need to recruit more hands and procure sufficient equipment.
The Governor, however, said the only answer to the quest of ending terrorism in all its forms was by total elimination, explaining that terrorists, especially those that specialise in banditry and kidnapping, had adapted their crime forms into a business, with the kind of financial turnover their original trades in cattle breeding could not have earned.
