Point One

Security services were reported at the weekend to be revving up their response to the siege of bandits on Kaduna State. The police readied some personnel for deployment as special intervention forces in Kuriga, Chikun council area where bandits abducted 287 schoolchildren on 7th March, while police and military units were to be deployed in Kajuru council area following another mass abduction there early last week. Bandits had penultimate Sunday night struck at Kajuru Station, in Kajuru council area, and herded some 86 villagers into captivity. It was the eighth incident of bandit attacks  within four weeks in which more than 400 persons have been abducted, and it happened barely 24 hours after 14 people were kidnapped in Dogo Noma, another community in the same Kajuru council area. Since the 7th March abduction of Kuriga schoolchildren, there’ve been four other incidents. On 8th March, two residents were killed and many kidnapped by bandits during Friday prayers at Kwasakwasa commu...

Controversial Muslim cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, returned to national radar last week with a proposal to negotiate with bandits who recently abducted some 287 schoolchildren from Kuriga in Chikun council area of Kaduna State. He offered to facilitate the release of the kidnapped pupils should President Bola Tinubu give him the nod, and warned it would be a mortal mistake on the part of government to spurn the option of negotiation with the criminals. Gun-wielding bandits had penultimate Thursday stormed Kuriga Government Secondary and LEA Primary schools in the morning hours, shooting in the air and herding off more than 300 pupils and teachers into the forest unchallenged by security forces. About 25 of the abductees subsequently escaped the terrorists’ hold and returned home, but the others remained in captivity as at late last week. The Kuriga incident happened barely 24 hours after insurgents kidnapped some 200 internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly women and youths in Ngala, he...

Yoruba nation activist Sunday Adeyemo, better known as Sunday Igboho, is back on the circuit. He lately served notice that he is back to dislodge killer herdsmen from Yorubaland and would not be needing the assistance of conventional security agencies to do that, but only self-help collaboration of fellow natives. Igboho only just returned to Nigeria from self-exile for the burial of his mother and has been spewing outrage against the incidents of banditry that had hobbled his native Southwest region, while not excluding other areas of the country. He said it was up to the people of the region to liberate themselves from suspected killer herdsmen who are terrorising them. Addressing cheering supporters on the heels of the funeral rites in his hometown, Igboho in Oyo State, he contended that conventional security agents deployed to Yorubaland, as in Ekiti State where monarchs were recently killed in broad daylight, could not tackle down the killers. Self-help remained the gospel the kin...