Kaduna State Governor, Nasiru El-Rufai has disclosed that kidnappings in Northern Nigeria have been hijacked by terrorist groups including Boko Haram to fund their operations.
The Governor, who said this on Sunday, said legislators are also working on state police to help governors fight insecurity.
“Bandits fighting sovereignty of Nigeria and we must treat them as such!” El-Rufai said.
He added that “it is clear that they are terrorists, it is also clear that the kidnapping operations are substantially funding Boko Haram activities in the Northeast. Boko Haram has known the way of getting money, some of them have slipped and joined the ranks of the bandits and together, they use this to raise large amounts of money to fund Boko haram operations. It is an entire industry, but the bulk is going towards terrorist financing.”
Speaking on State Police, El-Rufai disclosed that there are four bills, one to amend the constitution to remove police from the exclusive list and another to create state and federal service commissions. The third, which is to amend the police act has scaled the first reading.
He added that decentralization of the judiciary is a priority, and also, removing minimum wage from exclusive to the concurrent list because not all states have the same resources.
It would be recalled that in February, President Muhammadu Buhari stated that state governors must review their policies of rewarding bandits with money while saying that they must be instrumental in improving security around schools.
Nevertheless, El-rufai maintained that he will not negotiate with bandits and kidnappers, stressing that they deserve bullets instead of ransom.
