Banditry: Former Lawmaker Faults Bauchi Governor’s Plan to Recruit 20,000 Youths

Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi

A former member of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Hon. Aminu Tukur, has criticised the state government’s plan to recruit 20,000 youths to fight banditry in the state, describing the plan as the “highest peak of insincerity.”

The state Governor, Bala Mohammed, had appreciated the bravery of the local vigilante and hunters in Lere community of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area who collaborated with security agencies and killed 67 bandits as well as rescued 29 victims.

Mohammed disclosed last Monday at the palace of the village head of Lere that his administration would recruit 20,000 youths that would be trained by police and military personnel to collaborate with other security agencies to root out the worrisome incursion of bandits into the state.

Reacting to the governor’s plan, Tukur explained that there was no sincerity in the proposed plan to recruit thousands of youths to fight bandits, alleging that the administration was promoting banditry in several ways.

The former member, who represented Lere/Bula constituency in the state Assembly, in an interview with journalists in Bauchi yesterday, criticised the proposed plan, saying: “It’s the highest peak of insincerity.”

According to him, “If he is willing to stop banditry, let him start from his own district and arrest those who are responsible for creating more criminals in his own district.

“There is one Sarkin Bakam Dukuri, the chief hunter, who is being celebrated as someone who is all out to fight bandits but he is in fact creating more bandits than fighting them.”

The lawmaker alleged that the vigilante and hunters were allegedly arresting Fulani and innocent people, and extracting huge sum of money from them.

He further alleged that: “The whole thing is just to do with the fact that they will just go to the market and arrest Fulani youths and take them to Yelwa Duguri and fine them heavily.

“Recently, someone complained that they took four of his sons, and the family had to pay the sum of N600,000 for the first born, N400,000 for the second and third sons respectively, and N300,000 for third son before they were release. On whose coffers was that money taken to?”

Tukur also raised the alarm that an in-law of the state governor was operating a detention centre in the state “allegedly being run by one Umar Shayi, the younger brother to the governor’s wife.

“He (Shayi) has a detention centre of his own. It is where they detain people and fine them heavily before they  are released.

“If you are continually being fined and detained and got weakened by virtue of the economy, what do you resort to? You become a criminal.

“So the plan to recruit 20,000 youths to fight crime is not sincere. The first thing the governor has to do is to checkmate the activities of those so-called professional hunters that he is talking about.

“They are all out to collect money from innocent citizens.  The fundamental truth is that what relationship does an ordinary hunter has to do with Zone 12 Police Command?

“This is somebody who will arrest without the notification of the DPO that is assigned to him, bypassing the office of the DPO, the ACP, the Commissioner of Police, and head direct to Zone 12. All of these arrests are being done without the sanction of the DPO in the area.

“The conventional way is that a DPO of a given area has every right on whatever kind of security situation that takes place in his domain, not somebody who is an unauthorised uniform person carrying guns and harassing people.”