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Following calls in some quarters urging President Bola Tinubu to negotiate with bandits ravaging the northern part of the country, a former Secretary to the Government of Katsina State (SGS), Dr Mustapha Inuwa, has cautioned the President against such a move.
Inuwa said this while narrating his experience as the Chairman of the amnesty programme to end banditry in Katsina State under former governor Bello Massari.
Recently, a former Zamfara State governor, Senator Sani Yarima, proposed to Tinubu that negotiating with bandits, especially those operating in Zamfara State, offered the fastest way to end insecurity in the northern region.
However, Inuwa said offering to sit at the negotiation table with the criminals will end up being a futile exercise because the lucrative nature of kidnapping will make it impossible for bandits to change their ways.
He maintained that the bandits can't earn the kind of money they get from their criminal enterprise from any legitimate endeavour.
Therefore, he urged the government to stick to using force to bring the bandits to their knees while also calling for concerted efforts on the part of both security agencies and the respective Governors of problem states in the process.
He said, “I believe it is very wrong advice for a former governor and senator especially from a state worst hit by the activities of bandits to even contemplate negotiating with the bandits despite the atrocities committed by them in these states and Nigeria as a whole.
“We tried from 2017 to 2019 but it didn’t work because they are not sincere. We were compelled to go into that because we realized the security agencies were not doing what they ought to do.
"So we were under serious pressure from the people as they looked up to us to bring the menace to an end. And that was why we settled for the non-kinetic approach. It lasted for a brief period before it failed.
“It failed because, one, they were not sincere and second, because they are not organized and don’t have common leaders whom if you negotiate with can serve as their representatives.
"They have a rivalry and different groups. It is unlike when you are fighting a group on ideology, where they have a common leader, where you negotiate with him and he leads them. It is not that way. Bandits have different groups. How many will you deal with? Dealing with some groups and leaving out others will even create problems. And different groups are emerging daily.
“And also these people are thieves and criminals, if you negotiate with them what will you give them? Will you be giving them a salary or what? Then people who are used to getting huge sums of money, especially with these kidnapping activities. So there is nothing legitimate that they can do to get something close to what they are getting through the kidnapping activities.
"So it is impossible for this people to willingly accept to leave what they are doing for anything that you promise them. Because you cannot promise them what is close to what they are getting. In 2017 to 2019, we tried it and realized money we gave them was used to buy more arms. President Tinubu and his news NSA, Ribadu should not make the mistake of negotiating with them."