Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai says it is uncivilized to negotiate with bandits, hence the state government will not change his stances on the issue.
He said this during a zoom television interview on Sunday night.
He described those who consider the option of negotiation with bandits as “irrational and emotional.”
El-Rufai, unlike some of his colleagues favoured kinetic approach to end banditry.
The governor said bandits and kidnappers are attacking the state because of the government’s position not to negotiate with criminals.
He said: “I think that the bandits and their leaders decided to collectively target Kaduna state because of the position we have taken that we will not negotiate with them, that we will not give them a penny of taxpayers’ money.
“And whoever comes to Kaduna for the purpose of banditry or kidnapping is most likely going to end up dead.
“We believe that the solution to this problem is to intensify military operations from the air or the ground and wipe all of them out. We do not think any bandit deserves to live.
“There is no civilised society that can sit back when its sovereignty is challenged, when its monopoly of coercive power is challenged. The first thing to do is to wipe these bandits out. This is war, we must fight them to the end. We must wipe them out. That is the first order of business.
“When you wipe out 95 percent of them and if five percent are ready to repent and go back to normal civilian life, then we can talk but you don’t talk to criminals the moment they start. There is no other option. There is no society that sits and negotiates with criminals, nowhere in the world. You are empowering them, you are emboldening them.”
He said the government was using technology and kinetic approach to locate the abducted of 39 students from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka in Kaduna, who were kidnapped on March 11, 2021.
