Bello Matawalle, governor of Zamfara, says the state
reversed the decision to dialogue with bandits because the government was
deceived.
Matawalle had previously said dialogue is the best option to
tackle banditry in the country.
He had also asked his colleagues to endeavour to negotiate
with bandits in the interest of promoting peace.
But while attending a Juma’at service on September 10, the governor said the state will no longer offer amnesty to repentant bandits.
Speaking on Thursday while fielding questions from state
house correspondents after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, held at
the presidential villa in Abuja, Matawalle said the state now enjoys relative
peace.
He said the state government remains committed in the fight
against banditry, adding that the measures put in place to restore peace have
yielded results.
“They have deceived us. Some of them did not follow what we
agreed with them. We thought it was something we could continue with them, but
we later realised that they had deceived us. So, we had to back out of it and
decide to fight them to a logical conclusion,” he said.
“As you know, we are there fighting and we have taken a lot
of measures in order to curtail this problem of insurgency. We thank God it’s
yielding a lot of results. We’ve recorded a lot of successes from what we have
done.
“As you are aware, we have a lot of security personnel that
were deployed to Zamfara state and they are working seriously.”
On the current situation in the state, Matawalle said there
is calm and people are going on with their daily activities.
“It’s just that we have cut a lot of things, particularly
moving of foodstuffs, animals and selling of petroleum products,” he said.
“We have imposed a lot of measures and the people are happy
with the measures, because the people had suffered a lot; people were being
killed and kidnapped every day before, but today we have succeeded. We don’t
have many of such issues in Zamfara state.”
Zamfara, in recent times, has recorded numerous attacks by
bandits on communities across the state.
In an effort to curb insecurity, the Zamfara government
recently announced a temporary ban on the transportation of livestock beyond
the state’s borders.
The state has also ordered the closure of weekly markets,
while transportation of food items will be subject to verification.
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