Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna State governor, said yesterday that the financial resources available to terror rings in Nigeria are enough to destabilise the country.
El-Rufai said 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 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 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.”
“This is why under this administration, Nigerian Governors Forum collaborated with the Federal Government to take money from the Excess Crude Account to buy the Super Tucano jets and other armaments to strengthen our defence system.
“As far back as 2017, we saw the dangers of this and we made representations to the Federal Government to declare these bandits as terrorists. But they were advised that since they don’t have a single command and control the way Boko Haram, ISWAP and terrorists have, it is difficult to declare them insurgents.
“But I’m happy that, you know, by the ruling of the Federal High Court, they are now declared terrorists and they are a fair game. This is because the military were afraid of bombing them and then, facing ICC.
“The media, civil society, always like to protect those that are at the receiving end of something, not looking at the victims of those people sometimes. You know, no General wants to retire and then you go to the US, they arrest you and they say you bombed civilians and so on.
“So, there is reluctance on the part of the military but with this declaration by the Federal High Court now, I think we can go after them.”
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.
