The National President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim, has said that a decisive action must be taken on all the forests that provide safe haven for bandits, rustlers and insurgents in Katsina for the security crisis in the state to be checked.
The farmers’ leader, who is from Faskari, the epicentre of the crisis in the state, said the most effective way to tackle the bandits was to bulldoze and defoliate some sectors of the forests, an action, he regretted, climate change activists were continually against.
In a chat with our agric editor, Ibrahim, said the forests were the hiding place for the bandits and were so thick and almost inaccessible.
He said farmers could no longer go to their farms, which according to him, portends imminent food shortage.
Ibrahim noted that while the government was doing its utmost to stop the mayhem, it was frustrating for the people to contend with the “incessant banditry perpetrated by miscreants as if they were better fighters than the security agents.”
He said it was quite clear that the bandits were abreast of every move the security agents made because there were informants in the midst of the inhabitants in the frontline LGAs.
He further said, “The security agents should desist from announcing their every move and deployment because that also contribute to the seeming lack of success of some of the missions.
“The bandits seem to be always a few steps ahead of the security agents and carry out attacks in areas just vacated by the security agents in most cases.”
He, therefore, advocated the reappraisal of the leaderships of all security agencies charged with the responsibility of ensuring the security of life and property of Nigerians, and advised that, “Local vigilantes should be allowed to lead soldiers to the enclaves of the bandits and all suspected persons involved in perpetrating the menace.
