From John Adams, Minna
Worried by the killing of five Soldiers and a Mobile Policeman by gunmen in Alawa in Shiroro local government area of Niger state on Thursday, the Senator representing Niger East Senatorial district, Senator Mohammed Sani Musa has advised the Nigeria’s security agencies on the need to adopt new strategies to fight insurgencies and banditry now prevailing in parts of the country.
Senator Sani Musa who five out of the nine local government areas in his constituency under siege from bandits, said despite the efforts of the Security Agencies in the war against insurgency and Banditry, the situation seem to be worsening on a daily bases.
The Federal Lawmaker in an Easter message to the people of his constituency, a copy which was made available to our correspondent in Minna, pointed out that in the last five years, the people of his constituency have lost count of those killed by bandits.
According to him, “the government must come up with a new approach to address the security challenges in my constituency and the country in general”.
Sani Musa while lamenting the killing of those five soldiers and the Mobile policeman when armed bandits invaded their camp at about 2;00am on Thursday, expressed worries that the nation was losing too many of it’s trained personal to bandits and even the Boko Haram elements which requires the top echelon of the armed forces to re-stretagize to protect our soldiers and other Security Agents.
He then suggested that it will not be out of place if the military and other security agencies take the fight to the bandits and other criminal elements with a view to flushing them out of their hid-out in the forests “since they have turned the forests to their abodes from where the unleash mayhem on innocent and peace loving Nigerians”.
Musa described as shocking and totally unacceptable the the massacre of these security men by these lawless and blood thirsty bandits saying everything should be done to exterminate them once and for all.
He however said the army and police authorities should reconsider their decision to close the military camps at Allawa and Bassa as a result of Thursdays incident, stressing that what they need is reinforcement and change of strategies.
“Closing the camps is not the solution to the problem since chopping off the head has never been the solution to persistent headache, what we should do is to devise new methods of tackling insurgency and banditry.
“The closing of the camps will open the communities to more attacks by bandits”, he said.
He therefore commiserated with officers and men of the Nigerian Army and those of the police as well as the families of the deceased security operatives who lost their lives in the attacks by these bandits and pray to God to grant the souls of the departed eternal rest and their families the fortitude to bare the irreparable loss.
“I charge their families to take this ugly incident as an act of God and that these our loved ones died in the service to the nation”.