You’re Pampering Terrorists, Pyrates Confraternity Tells Buhari

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

The National Association of Seadogs otherwise known as the Pyrates Confraternity, has blamed the attacks on military facilities in the country on President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government’s decision to pamper terror suspects.

According to the association, so-called bandits have become embolden because of the culture of impunity, which the Buhari administration has allowed to thrive.

The NAS Capoon, Mr Abiola Owoaje, in statement made available to newsmen in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state, said, “Federal Government must rethink its war on terrorism” and called on the government to get serious in prosecuting terror suspects if it hoped to win the war against terror.

While describing the previous attack on the NDA and the recent attack of the Forward Operating Base in Mutumji, Dansadau Local Government Area of Zamfara State as embarrassing, it lamented that terrorism and all kinds of atrocious crimes had blossomedunder the present administration, because the government had been trivialising terrorism.

Owoaje faulted the deradicalisation policy of the federal government for not being transparent and called for the immediate trial of all terror suspects to demonstrate the federal government sincerity to tackle terrorism.

“It is incongruous that a country ranked third in the Global Index of Terrorism is seemingly unable to interdict the sponsors of terror and negotiating with these criminal elements, and even unconstitutionally granting pardons to self-confessed murderers and ‘reintegrating’ them back into the society through a non-transparent deradicalisation policy.

“President Buhari as the Commander-in-Chief leading the security agencies must do more to convince Nigerians on the sincerity of his government’s fight against terrorism. We reiterate that the government should rethink its strategies to combat terror by ceasing all manner of negotiations with criminal elements in the northeast and northwest. The recent disclosures by Governors Matawalle and Masari on the failed negotiation with bandits show that from the onset, negotiating with bandits was a self-defeatist strategy.

“To this end, the hundreds of terror suspects in various detention centres should be screened and those found culpable of mass murder and other crimes should be put on trial immediately. Also, the 400 Bureau De Change (BDC) operators, that the office of the Attorney-General, Mr Abubakar Malami announced in May 2021, of being implicated as sponsors and financers of terrorism should be immediately put on trial.

“A similar trial and conviction of six Nigerian bureau de change operators for sponsoring terrorism in United Arab Emirate in November 2020 is a pointer to the Nigerian government on how not to pamper terror suspects.

“Finally, and for the umpteenth time, we demand that the federal government and our security agencies get serious with intelligence gathering to weed out internal collaborators, identify sponsors of terror, cut off their sources of funding, supplies and punish severely those found guilty. Nigerians are tired of the excuses; President Buhari should act now before terrorists overrun his government and our country.”