Bemoans lack of leadership in the North
Zamfara State Governor, Mohammed Matawalle, has warned that banditry rocking the Northwestern region of Nigeria may spread nationwide if necessary measures are not taken to tackle the menace.
The Governor, however, lamented the absence of responsible leadership in the North to guide the region out of the challenges it finds itself, as its ruling elite have no vision for the region beyond gaining political power.
He opined that agelong injustice and leadership failure were responsible for the banditry ravaging the region, and not the much-talked-about mining in Zamfara.
Matawalle stated this in Kaduna, while presenting a lead paper entitled “The Fight Against Banditry in Northwest Nigeria: Challenges and Solutions” during the inauguration of the new executives of Arewa Media Writers’ Association held at Kabir Gymnasium.
Represented by his Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Ibrahim Magaji Dosara, the Governor also described lack of support from a section of political elite interested in taking advantage of the crises to score political points and reluctance by affected ”states” to embrace peace dialogue as bottlenecks to ending banditry and other related crimes in the region.
His words, “Rural banditry in Zamfara and other parts of the North, in my opinion, is as a result of the progressive degradation of our moral standards and a culture of greed fed by an unfettered need for material goods.”
“The North lacks responsible leadership to steer it through our time’s uncharted waters. Our ruling elite have no vision for the region beyond gaining political power. We have all seen how the elite in the Southeast and Southwest respond in unison to all matters concerning their regions’ development.
“We have seen how they have a defined agenda and are relentless in their pursuit of regional development.
“Unless we wake up to the situation, the war against banditry in the Northwest will remain a significant security challenge that has the potential to swallow the region and the country. The destruction that banditry is wreaking on the region’s people and the economy is unfathomable,” he said.
