INSECURITY: ‘We Will Become Boko Haram If You Continue To Underrate Us,’ Bandits Tell Government At Peace Meeting (Details below)

Bandits leaders in Nigeria have accused the Federal and State Governments of underrating them.

“This is how Boko Haram started, Nigeria has underestimated us and the problem”, one of them, Kachalla Turji said at a meeting with Islamic clerics.

The parley was conveyed by Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, at Makkai forest.

In attendance were other Islamic clerics, another bandit leader, Kachalla Muhammadu Bello, and several foot soldiers.

In his remarks, Turji, who controls Shinkafi/Sokoto Road in Zamfara State, said Nigerian and Zamfara authorities failed to fulfil their promises.

Declaring that the fighters were not afraid of death, he expressed anger that Fulani were usually attacked by indigenes of Zamfara and elsewhere.

Turji hinted that the problem may linger except dialogue. He boasted about the volume of weapons they had and suggested gangs could bring the state to its knees.

The bandit head, trained by late Buharin Daji, added that if he is killed, there would be hundreds of other fighters capable of replacing him.

Recall that the Nigerian Senate last week demanded a deadline from the Federal Government on when banditry and insurgency will be ended in the country.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Army, Senator Ali Ndume, said Buhari should mandate the new service chiefs to report directly to the National Security Adviser instead of the existing practice of reporting to the Chief of Staff.

He said, “I have been advocating and I am still advocating that now that there is a new set of service chiefs, their requirements should be front-loaded.

“If they require an amount of money to execute the war, they should be exempted from quarterly allocations and be given their money upfront.

“Once the government does that, I suggest that the President should now give them a timeline.

“That (timeline) should determines their tenure. If they don’t perform, government should not waste time in replacing them.

“The National Security Adviser should monitor and coordinate their activities. He should report to the President on daily or weekly basis so as to monitor the time line.

“I believe that the insecurity war could be brought to an end within six months if the current crop of service chiefs are given what they needed.”

Ndume said intelligence gathering was not the problem of the war against insecurity, but the lack of synergy between agencies fighting the war.

He said, “The idea of the service chiefs reporting to the Chief of Staff is wrong. It is totally out of place because we have a senior person in the military hierarchy that should do the work.

“The role of coordination and Supervision of security issues in this country must be the National Security Adviser.

“The Minister of Defence, who is a retired general, could also supervise them.

“The President should not deal directly with the service chiefs because they will tell him what he wants to hear.

“The NSA would be able to ask questions and put them to more task. There must be a situation room in the office of the NSA where daily reports of what’s happening in the operations would be obtained on daily basis.”

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