Negotiating with bandits without considering victims welfare will only aggravate insecurity- Gov. Radda

By Our Correspondent

Katsina State governor, Umaru Dikko Radda, has reiterated his resolve to flush out bandits and criminal elements from the State without an option of negotiating with them.

To achieve this, the governor said the State has established a Civilian Joint Task Force called Community Watch Corps to complement the efforts of the federal security agencies in tackling incidences of kidnapping and killings in the State.

Gov. Radda, who stated this Friday at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja, maintained that the promise and priority of his administration to the people of the State is to stamp out insecurity and improve their living standard through wealth creation.

The governor noted that criminal elements who derived pleasure in killing, raping and maiming innocent citizens deserve no special treatment while their victims continued to live out the harrowing experience they were subjected to by these criminals.

” I have said it over and over that I will not negotiate with bandits. Negotiations with bandits is a no go area in my perspective but I said if I am at the point of advantage, if the bandits come out, and say look we are dropping arms, let us sit down and talk, we could reintegrate them back into the society. But I will not go begging bandits to come for negotiations. It is so disheartening and demoralizing,” Gov. Radda averred.

He adduced that negotiating with bandits to give them soft landing without first meeting with victims to work out plan to address their pains and loss will only fuel increase in insecurity.

The governor deplored a recent development in the State where security agents were seen negotiating with bandits in a primary school in the glare of the citizens who are victims of these criminal elements.

He said: “An incident has just happened in Katsina State where there was negotiation, even though the state government, we were not involved or informed about it. We just saw it on social media, but the most mind-boggling issue is instead of the negotiations to take place elsewhere, it happened in the full glare of the public. The civilians folded their arms seeing bandits who were killing their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, with fully kitted arms sitting in a primary school negotiating with the Nigerian security.

“That has really caused a lot of pressure on us, because the people are saying if you are negotiating with bandits, what happened to us who are victims whose properties were destroyed, lives cut short, mothers raped? What plans do you have for us?

” It should be a win-win situation. There should be a programme that tackles and addresses the issue of the victims before you start talking to a criminal to lay arms. It is very important to do that. If you do one side and you neglect the other, you are not doing anything. You have only aggravated the problem. So you are simply telling the people to take arms because you only negotiate with the person who takes arms.”

The former Director General of Small and Medium Scale Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, SMEDAN, emphasized that the sole aim of setting up the Community Watch Corps is to support the conventional security agencies to address the issue of insecurity in the State, adding that the State has followed all the laid down regulations and it is being carried out in concert with the federal security agencies.