‘Dialogue with bandits will worsen insecurity’ — Kaduna APC warns PDP

The Kaduna All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign council says the plan by Isah Ashiru, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the state, to dialogue with bandits in an effort to tackle insecurity, will make the problem worse.

In an interview with Arise Television, Ashiru said, talking with the bandits would bring their activities to an end in the state.

“We have to engage these people involved in banditry and kidnapping. They are people living among us,” the governorship candidate said.

“People are thinking that they are monsters, but they are not. We can sit with them, discuss, and bring this menace to an end.”

Kaduna has been one of the hotbeds for bandits in the north-west. The bandits carried out a brazen attack in March 2022 on a Kaduna-bound train and took captives for months.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ibraheem Musa, APC’s campaign council’s communications director, said no government authority should negotiate with criminals.

“The only way to deal with them is to treat them in the language that they understand, which is to take the battle to their hideouts and attack them to submission, which our gallant armed forces are now doing,” Musa said.

“States which followed the ill-fated plan of negotiating with bandits and entering a peace deal with them ended up regretting it.

“The so-called repentant bandits did not only return to their old ways of killing and kidnapping for ransom, they became more ferocious because they acquired more sophisticated weapons to restock their arsenal.”