…The country will be secure, President assures
Northern governors on Monday decried the increasing security challenges plaguing the region in their closed doors meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, as they lamented that the spate of banditry and kidnapping was becoming more threatening than the Boko Haram insurgents.
The governors also said that the rate of banditry and kidnapping in the North West and North Central was frightening and gradually becoming more threatening like the insurgency in the North East and called for urgent and decisive action to end the insecurity in the region.
Speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting, Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, who spoke on behalf of the governors, said that the meeting with the President was to brief him on the increasing insecurity in the North.
Masari said that they briefed President Buhari on the strategy adopted by states to tackle the increasing security situation and that the President had already started doing something in that direction.
He said that they came to see the President based on a resolution of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) at a meeting held in Kaduna 10 days ago.
Responding to the governors fears, President Muhammadu Buhari gave assurances on security in the country, stressing that he will not let the nation down.
The President told the Northern Governors Forum led by the outgoing Chairman, Kashim Shettima of Borno State at the State House that “the security of the country is on my mind 24 hours of the day. I get daily and weekly situation reports. I have listened to your brief. I will look into your recommendations. I am acutely aware of the situation, but I have learnt more today.”
The President bemoaned the ravaging effects of unchecked corruption in the past on the country’s armed forces, saying: “The terrible effects of mismanagement were prevalent and these are the consequences.
“If you follow the efforts we are making within the system, you will see that we have curbed much of the corruption that is there.
See the recoveries that we have made – money, landed property. We are not going as fast as we want under the system, but we will keep trying to improve it.”
President Buhari promised to increase the frequency of his meetings with security chiefs and keep updating himself.
He also expressed interest in getting reports from governors who have difficult relationships with security heads in their states.
In their presentations, the governors drew the President’s attention to specific challenges they each faced in their respective states.
They, however, commended the Federal Government’s efforts in curbing Boko Haram terrorism and farmers/herders clashes, which they said had been dealt with.
While noting that normalcy has virtually returned to the North-East, the governors however, warned that armed banditry was posing a dangerous threat and needs to be tackled with equal swiftness.
According to Governor Masari, the issue that brought the governors to meet with the President is about the rising insecurity in the North West, North Central and North East.
He disclosed that the “North East is known for Boko Haram insurgency, but of recent what was known to be cattle rustling in the North West and some parts of the North Central has turned out to be something different from what we had before.
So, this concern made us to come and brief the President so that urgent action would be taken in order to curb this deadly menace of banditry which is gradually graduating into insurgency.
“You know the North West has a vast forest area going to the North Central and then even going out of Nigeria.
So we need to act quickly and decisively, so that it doesn’t turn into something else like what we have in the North East.”
He said President Buhari gave his full commitment that something urgently will be done in order to make sure that the menace was curbed.
The governor, who said that they made suggestions to the President on the way forward, refused to disclose the solution but said “it’s not for public consumption.”
On Magajin Gari Daura, who was abducted 26 days ago, he said: “I think the police are working seriously and they have made some progress, but for obvious reasons, they cannot disclose all what they have done for security reasons, but work is going on.”
The governors at the meeting were Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, Kashim Shetima of Borno, Yahaya Bello of Kogi, Simon Lalong of Plateau, Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi, Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa State, Abdulazziz Yari of Zamfara State and Sani Bello of Niger State.
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