Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has stated that the failure to mount a simultaneous and sustained bombardment against bandits in the north-west has led to an increase in their activities.
El-Rufai stated this on Wednesday at the presentation of the 2020 Annual Security Report in Kaduna.
According to the governor, his state and neighbouring states have been supporting the efforts of security agencies with funding and resources since 2015.
“Together with Niger state and our neighbours in the north-west, we put together resources to fund military operations against bandits in the Kamuku-Kuyambana forest range that straddles the region,” he said.
He however expressed regrets that the collaboration “was not sustained or expanded into a campaign of continuous, simultaneous operations against the bandits across our vast region.
“Failure to contain and defeat them in one place has emboldened them to develop a national footprint and endanger national cohesion.”
“The security of our communities depend on the robust projection of state power, and that can only be done with sufficient security numbers to overawe and deter criminals,” he added.
Governor El-Rufai also called for the establishment of state police, stressing that the current police set up in Nigeria are not adequate enough.
He added: “The prerogatives of the state need to be asserted, not merely proclaimed. The people we put in uniform must never be placed in avoidable danger, outgunned or outnumbered by non-state actors.
“In our view, critical to multiplying and reinforcing state power is a decentralisation of policing.
“There are simply are not enough police officers in Nigeria and the idea of policing such a vast, federal republic of nearly a million square kilometres in a unitary manner is not pragmatic.”
