Former member of the House of Representatives, Aminu Sani-Jaji, has said that bandits and kidnappers deserve fire-for-fire from security agents in the country.
Speaking with select newsmen on Thursday in Abuja, Mr Jaji argued that there was no need negotiating with such men of the underworld whose stock in trade is to kill and maim defenceless Nigerians.
Mr Jaji, a former chairman, House Committee on Internal Security and Intelligence in the 8th Assembly, expressed support for Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State for refusing to negotiate with criminals in the country.
A former governorship aspirant in Zamfara State in the 2019 poll, Mr Jaji said: “I am 100 percent in full support of the Kaduna State governor, Ahmad Nasir El-Rufai on the use of force against bandits.
“I said it before now and I will still repeat myself again. There is no way you say that you want to reconcile or dialogue with bandits.
“First thing the governor or government needs to do is to have a clear information about the bandits, their strength, their capacity and the source and the people involved in the nefarious activities.
“I believe if the governments have the intelligence information, there is no need to dialogue with them.
“How can you dialogue with somebody with over 300 AK-49 riffles and in the process of the dialogue with him he surrenders say 10 of these rifles and, instead of allowing him to go free, you move huge sum of money from government coffers to give him again.
“If he gets the AK47 riffle at the rate of N100,000, he surrenders 10 of the guns and you pay him N10 million, that means technically you have encouraged him to remain in the business. It means he will go and buy 20 of the AK-47 riffles.
“What is the logic in this? Before May 2019, most of the routes where they used to operate from were cut off by the security agencies.
“At the time they felt there was no option but to surrender. But with this whole idea of dialogue all over they are now operating freely.
“There is simply no need to dialogue with them because it is fueling the problem. In 2018, I told former Governor Yari that it is important but not the way they were going about it.
“Look at one if the conversations between one of the bandits and the Jibia Local Government Area Caretaker Chairman, everybody that listened to it would agree that we are in a serious problem and you would also agree that anybody calling for dialogue is only wasting his time.
“Imagine that a bandit living in the bush knows how to get N1million, N2 million even up to N30million and you expect him to surrender just like that?
“This is a material crime and there is nowhere in the world that such a crime just ended like that. It had to be fire for fire.”
