Negotiating With Bandits Criminal, Says Kano Commissioner

Laleye Dipo in Minna

Kano State Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, Alhaji Danladi Abdulhameed, has said that negotiating with bandits is a criminal exercise that will not yield any fruitful result.

Speaking against the backdrop of some states and local government officials in the northern part of the country dialoguing with bandits, Alhaji Abdulhameed said the exercise is a fruitless effort that will not guarantee peace and stability in the affected states.

The commissioner, who stated this during a parley with journalists in Minna, the Niger State capital, said these bandits and gunmen are in business and will not on account of negotiation abandon their “trades”.

“Negotiating with bandits is criminal, these people (bandits) already see banditry as business when you dialogue with them you are sending them out of business,” he declared.

He however lamented the growing spate of insecurity in the country, saying banditry and kidnapping have thrown many Nigerians and farmers out of their farms and businesses resulting in low agricultural production, hunger and starvation across the country.

If the economy of the country is to improve, the commissioner said, “there must be adequate security for people to perform their legitimate duties because as things are now the economy of the country has gone back to the bandits in the forests.”

He also decried the high rate of corruption in the country describing it as the bane of democracy.

“Corruption is the bane of Nigeria’s Democracy unless the cankerworm is drastically reduced, the nation will continue to record slow progress.”

He asserted that “Most of the money in public purses have gone into private pockets. They stock them in soakaways and in ceilings of their houses.

“If our leaders at independence, the likes of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, late Ahmadu Bello, late Tafawa Balewa and Alhaji Aminu Kano should come back today they will wage war against our present leaders because of their corrupt attitudes,” adding, “they will say this is not the dream we had for Nigeria.”

Abdulhameed advocated a total reorientation of the country’s leadership asking them to put the country first instead of themselves and immediate families.

“Our (Nigeria) dreams have been shattered, our dreams have been bastardised, the average Nigerians are suffering, the average Nigerians are not secured.”

Abdulhameed dismissed the claim by former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is planning to remain in office for life insisting that “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu cannot aspire to be president for life in Nigeria because he is a democrat.”