Zamafara State governor, Bello Matawalle, has accused ‘political bandits’ of increasing figures of killings in the state.
He disclosed this to State House correspondents on Monday after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja.
According to him, the government was doing everything possible to stem the tide of killings in the state.
He assured the residents of the state that they will see concrete actions against banditry in the next three days.
He said, “Yes, I have already cleared the air about the figures. Because I have seen some reporting that 200 people, 300 people, 500 people were killed.
“But I went to the community by myself and the security agencies. First, we went to Bungudu and we confirmed from the Emir that it was 36 people that have been killed and two communities were razed by these bandits.
“And when we went to Anka, we met the Emir, at the time we met him he gave us a list of 22 people that have been killed, making the total number of 58 people killed.
“But as I’ve been saying, some political bandits have been spreading lies, rumours, so that they can achieve some political gain. But it is 58 people that have been killed.
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“But some people will just go to social media and be writing some figures and I have informed Mr. President of some people who think that with this insecurity they can achieve something out of it. Because I wonder how people will just be writing figures without having genuine information from those communities.
“Someone will just call media personnel and tell him that look, so so number of people have been killed in so so place.
“Some people even swear with Holy Qur’an that thousands of people have been killed which is grossly misleading but we know all those kind of people do not want peace in the nation but God will prevail insha Allah.”
The governor further explained reasons why banditry may not end in the state soon.
Matawalle said he backed out of negotiations with bandits after they broke the terms of the agreement.
“So, you see with the kind of people we have in Zamfara State, I don’t think this issue of banditry will end very soon. Because already some people are behind it.
“Some people are using it. And all they need is at least to show Nigerians that both the federal and Zamfara state governments are not serious on the issue of insecurity, even though some of them are involved in the crisis of this insecurity. But we’re doing our best,” he added.
