From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to come to the aid of state governors, saying most forests across the country now accommodate terrorists, armed robbers, bandits and criminals.
This is even as he called for the establishment of another military training base in the forest bordering the three states of Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Plateau, to check the activities of the criminals.
The governor spoke at the State House after a meeting with President Buhari about the security situation in his state.
Describing the security challenges in the country as unfortunate, he said: “There are challenges all over the country that are unfortunate, but we believe Mr. President is doing his best with other stakeholders in order to curtail the situation.
“We need the helping hand, especially governors and chairmen of local governments. We have observed that the security situation now, our forests are the major problems because they accommodate bandits, terrorists and armed robbers.
“In Kano State we have taken some measures. We have two large forests the Falgore forest, which is bordering Kano, Kaduna and Bauchi and also not far away from Plateau. In that forest, we established a military training ground in conjunction with the Army. And there’s a lot of military training going on in that forest using the facilities that we have provided. I have requested Mr President to also establish another institution within that forest and that forest will be liberated completely.
“Also, we have introduced technology within the forest, from the office of the DSS in Kano and the Office of the Commissioner of Police and even from my office, we are able to monitor what is happening in that forest. And there’s effective communication between the DSS and the police and those who are managing the forest; the checkpoints and various places that security agencies are manning.
“Also community policing, we are making it a very important agenda. The traditional rulers right from the amas, district heads, village heads, ward heads, Imams and major stakeholders; we are holding regular meetings and the security agencies get a lot of information for the local people that is helping Kano state a lot.
“Also in Kano metropolitan where we have eight mega local governments, we are establishing some technology. In particular, we’re improving the network system within metropolitan Kano. We’re laying over 100 kilometres optic fibre within Kano metropolitan. So that CCTV cameras will be more effective. So that we can manage the whole mega city in terms of security and also in terms of improvement of network.
“We have also constituted what we call an enlarged Security Committee. Because limiting it to the Air Force, Army, Police, DSS Civil Defence, I think the security network in terms of flow of information, requires much more than that. So we are including Customs, Immigration, Correctional homes, those involved in Human Trafficking Prevention of Human trafficking, NAFDAC, even the NDLEA.
Federal Road Safety Corps, our own local traffic managers, Karota, the Vigilante group, all these we put them into one committee where we’re hold meetings and exchange information.