By Our Reporter
The governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has said the objective of criminal elements engaged in kidnapping for ransom is to hijack the treasury of the government and this is not in public interest.
According to El-Rufai, when kidnappers demand for ransom from the government it is their intention to force the government to surrender to them public funds and this would not be encouraged by his government.
He equally noted that the efforts by some state governments to negotiate with bandits had not worked, rather it encouraged them to kidnap more people.
“Several states sought to negotiate their way out of the problems by talking to bandits, paying them money or offering them amnesty. This has not worked and has only encouraged the criminals to press ahead for a surrender of the public treasury to them. That is clearly not in the public interest,” he stated.
His explanation came against the backdrop of how bandits on Monday killed two students of Greenfield University, a private institution in Kaduna. This occurred three days after three of the students of the same school were killed.
Both incidents happened at a time when no less than 29 students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna, remained in captivity 47 days after their abduction. In both cases, the governor had equally insisted on the no-ransom policy of his government, pointing that that seeing the end of bandits was the only viable solution to the menace rather than capitulating.
Against the backdrop of criticisms that his government did not negotiate with bandits, the governor asked, “Are people bothering with the consequences of state surrender to hoodlums, or is the continued politicization of security challenges not going to make all of us ultimately victims of the insurgents
“The fact that criminals seek to hold us by the jugular does not mean we should surrender and create an incentive for more crime. In today’s Nigeria, it has become fashionable to treat the unlawful demands of bandits as worthy of consideration and to lampoon people who insist that outlaws should be crushed and not mollycoddled or availed the resources they can use to unleash further outrages.”
As the governor noted in a statement released by his Special Adviser on Media and Communication, Mr Muyiwa Adekeye., “Mass abduction was like a novelty in 2014. But the facts have changed since then. Negotiations and ransoms have been undertaken, but these have not stopped the criminals. It has only encouraged them. It is only prudent to review one’s position when the facts change, and the suggestion made by a citizen years ago cannot be taken as the immutable answer to a serious problem which has evolved since 2014, no matter the viral replays of the said video clip.
“The Kaduna State Government has been consistently transparent about its security challenges. It has supported and continues to resource the security agencies in the state. We are engaging the Federal Government to have security responses that move away from reactive response of repelling bandits towards a comprehensive, proactive offensive that takes the battle to the criminals and uproots them. As a sub-national, with no direct control of any of the security agencies, we cannot make this task more difficult by giving criminals the resources to acquire more arms.”
The governor said further that he “regrets the recent kidnaps and killings of students from tertiary institutions in our state, and we sympathize with their families with whom we share the aim of the safe return of all the students. We mourn the dead students and we offer our condolences to the family and friends of the deceased. The ruthless and heartless resort of the kidnappers to murdering these young persons is part of their effort to further their blackmail and compel us to abandon our ‘no-ransom, no-negotiation’ policy.”
