President Muhammadu Buhari, Thursday, gave the National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd), urgently come up with a road map to crush banditry in the Northwest, especially Zamfara State.
Malam Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, revealed this in a press release.
Acording to Garba Shehu, Buhari “ordered an immediate response to rising cases of bandit attacks on communities in Zamfara State.”
In the General Monguno, the President ordered that “there must be a clear pathway to ending the resurgent banditry that has continued to cost lives and the displacement of thousands of families from their towns and villages.”
Shehu, in the release, recalled that the Speaker of the Zamfara State House of Assembly, Hon. Nasir Magarya, recently, wrote a letter to Buhari appealing to him to intervene and stop the incessant killings by bandits in the state.
Consequently, Shehu revealed that a meeting was being convened by the NSA to deliberate on risng cases of insecurity and the issue of illegal mining which is fueling the crisis in Zamfara State.
The meeting will be attended by Major-General Bashir Magashi (Rtd), Ogbeni Ra’uf Aregbesola and Architect Olamilekan Adegbite, Ministers of Defence, Interior, and Mines and Steel respectively. Others are the Directors-General of the Department of State Services, DSS, and the National Intelligence Agency, NIA.
Beyond the problems of bandits and cattle rustlers, the scale of lawlessness has been aggravated by illegal miners who are harvesting resources they have no legal rights to exploit.
