The National Publicity Secretary of pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin, on Thursday, said some state governors are encouraging persistent attacks by bandits in parts of the country by supporting their activities.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with our correspondent Odumakin said some government officials are supporting banditry in Nigeria because they are beneficiaries of the criminal activities of the marauders.
The Afenifere spokesman was reacting to the kidnap of some students and staff of Government Science College, Kagara, in Niger State. The victims were kidnapped when bandits stormed the school on Wednesday morning. A student was also reportedly killed by the bandits during the attack.
Reacting, Odumakin said those in government owe Nigerians a lot of explanations.
He said, “It was the late Sani Abacha who said that if the kind of things we are going through continues in the country for more than 48 hours, the executives in the land have questions to answer. At this point, we should be asking our executives in Nigeria; ‘What is going on?’
“They cannot pretend they don’t know what is going on. The way the spokesmen of this regime defend these bandits, the way some governors openly defend them shows clearly that there are people in authority who are aware of the pains that the country is going through at the moment and who for one reason or the other are encouraging it as their benefactors and beneficiaries.
“They are encouraging them for selfish reasons which are not in the interests of the country because for one reason or the other, they are benefitting from what they are doing.
“Don’t forget that in 2016, (Nasir) El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State told the nation that he went out of this country to go and pay money to foreign Fulani who are coming to kill his people. The governor of Bauchi has been defending the right to gunmen carrying AK-47 saying they are using it to defend themselves. When you put all these together, we can no longer pretend that people in government knows what is going on.”
Wednesday’s attack happened a few months after bandits kidnapped over 300 schoolboys from Government Science Secondary School in Kankara, Katsina State.
The incident happened in December exactly on the same day the President Muhammadu Buhari visited his home town in Daura, also in Katsina.
The lads were, however, released some six days later but it wasn’t clear whether ransom was paid or not to secure their freedom.
Aside from Kankara and Kagara, non-state actors had also abducted hundreds of secondary school girls from Chibok, in Borno State; and Dapchi in Yobe State. Some of them eventually regained freedom while a number of them were detained in the enclaves of their abductors and sexual abusers.
When asked whether he nursed any fears that the South-West was the next for a kidnapping of mass magnitude, the Afenifere said, “Already, the bandits are all over the country.”
