Agaju Madugba, Katsina
A cross section of senior personnel from the nation’s armed forces and the police arrived Katsina State on Thursday at the instance of the Federal government, to assess the level of insecurity in the area following recent killings across a number of communities, by bandits.
The state deputy governor, Mannir Yakubu, received the delegation led by Major-Gen. B. I. Ahanotu, at the Government House.
“Katsina is in a state of mourning, due to the series of killings by bandits,” the deputy governor lamented, noting that farmers can no longer go to their farms due to activities of bandits.
Yakubu said that the present administration actually inherited aspects of the insecurity situation in 2015 but that government took certain measures to tackle the problem including an amnesty programme for repentant cattle rustlers and bandits.
As he put it, “the measures we took started yielding some fruits and peace was restored but it could not be sustained because we share boundaries with non-peaceful states of Zamfara and Kaduna.
“We thank President Muhammadu Buhari for responding promptly to our distress call and we are also happy that the Federal government had pledged to wade into the issue. This problem has to be tackled and solved now so that our farmers can return to the farms more so as the rainy season has already set in. If we do not solve this problem now, there may be food scarcity and the Rugu forest housing the bandits may not be accessible during the rainy season.”
The leader of the delegation had earlier explained to the deputy governor that they were in the state to assess the level of insecurity in the area especially following the recent killings across a number of communities in the state.