Masari regrets amnesty for bandits

Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State may have been consumed by the nefarious activities of bandits in the state and other states in the northwest Nigeria, thus, regretting soft measures adopted to persuade the bandits to drop their violent trade. The Katsina State governor, therefore, regretted granting amnesty to ‘repentant’ bandits in the state, who turned out to be worse than they were before the governor’s soft landing.

Governor Masari, who had earlier opposed tough measures, like using security personnel to eliminate the bandits, now laments that the amnesty he granted to bandits some years ago has become counterproductive in the security of the state, decrying that he would not have done that.

Though Governor Masari denied regretting the amnesty to bandits, he, however, admitted that his efforts in 2016 and 2019 failed totally to yield the desired positive result, and that those approaches would not have been adopted.

The Katsina governor was cited to have stated in a media conversation: “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 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.

“The reality is, there is nobody in the forest that can discuss peace. “For me, anybody in the forest is a potential criminal, so I think it should be dealt with as such.”

Masari was among the northern governors who believed in negotiation with the bandits in the past. The governor further had a public picture with a bandits leader in the state, with an Army Officer in the picture, in seeming show of solidarity for the gunmen. Unfortunately, he has begun to see things differently as the states in northwest Nigeria have been made ungovernable by bandits ravaging the zone.