Banditry: Anybody in the forest is a potential criminal and should be dealt with as such

September 7, 2021

Katsina State Governor Aminu Masari has stressed that with the danger posed by bandits in the country, with a mission to steal and kill, they should be treated as criminals.

The governor who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today noted that anybody in the forest is a potential criminal and so should be dealt with as such. “The reality is, there is nobody in the forest that can discuss peace”, he said.

He added that with the recent activities of bandits and information now at his disposal, he wouldn’t have granted amnesty to them as he did years back, but with no regrets, he said previous efforts in 2016 and 2019 have obviously not yielded any positive result.

“I don’t regret it, the only thing I say is with the benefits of hindsight, I wouldn’t have done it, because at that time when we started in 2016, there were leaders but gradually all the leaders were eliminated, that was the failure of the first round,” the governor said.

“The second round after the 2019 election didn’t see the light of the day. We tried but then we realised that, ‘who are you talking to?’ They are not under the same umbrella. They are not pushing for any religious belief. They are just bandits, criminals, and thieves,” he added.