‘750 kidnappers, cattle rustlers’ surrender in Kaduna

At least 750 kidnappers, cattle rustlers and bandits have renounced their crimes in Kubau local government area of Kaduna state.

They swore an oath to turn a new leaf at the renunciation ceremony which held at the council, on Sunday.

Speaking at the event, Austin Iwar, the state commissioner of police, said 400 persons had earlier taken the same step and renounced their crimes.

He said the repentant suspects were offered the opportunity to turn a new lead by the Kaduna state government as well as Ibrahim Idris, the inspector-general of police (IGP).

Iwar added that they have agreed to surrender their arms to the government.

“Having young people that are roaming in the bush committing all forms of crimes to come out and renounce violence, swear by Holy Qur’an that they will not go back to violence again is very important,” he said.

“You will understand that it is a very difficult decision for a criminal to come out in public and announce the atrocities he has been doing.

“I assure you very soon we will begin to recover most of these arms, as some of them have volunteered to handover their arms back, but not in public.

“One of the strategies we decided to adopt is to see how we can get across to some community leaders in the context of community policing programme we are doing.

“If you want to solve a problem you have to work with people that created the problem; we also held series of meetings with hunters as a prelude to the series of activities we call renouncing violence strategies.”