Senate Issues New Directives To Buhari On Insecurity

The Upper Legislative Chamber also urged President Muhammadu Buhari to deploy fighter jets to the North West to curtail the activities of bandits in the region.

All Facts Newspaper reports that these were some of the resolutions reached during Wednesday's plenary following a point of order raised by Senator Bello Mandiya (APC Katsina South).

The lawmaker raised the order on the "Urgent need for the Federal Government to take drastic actions to bring to an end the act of banditry and kidnapping in Faskari Local Government Area in Katsina StateÔÇØ

Mandiya noted that the act of banditry and kidnapping has become a daily incidence in Katsina with huge consequences of loss of lives, means of livelihood, and displacement of communities.

He recalled that on Sunday, January 31, 2022, gunmen struck Ruwan Godiya, a Community in Faskari Local Government Area of Katsina State where 38 members of the community were kidnapped.

The lawmaker stated that the Federal Government had made a frantic effort in curbing the menace by setting up Operation Sharan Daji and an Inter-Agency Task Force to tackle cases of banditry, cattle rustling, and kidnapping in Katsina state.

Contributing, Senator Kabir Abdullahi Barkiya (Katsina Central), faulted the inability of the military to contain the situation despite several calls for it to act.

In his remarks, Senate President Ahmad Lawan said the repeated cases of kidnappings and killings make it imperative for the military to "wake upÔÇØ to protect Nigerians.

He wondered why full-scale action was yet to be carried out by the military in spite of increased funding for security in the 2022 budget by the Executive and National Assembly.

Accordingly, the Senate urged the Security Agencies to comb all known hideouts of the kidnappers in a bid to rescue the Thirty-Eight (38) persons abducted by the gunmen in Ruwan Godiya.

It also called on the Federal Government to send enough military personnel and fighter jets to apprehend the bandits and restore normalcy in the affected areas.