Bandits: Former lawmaker condemns Bauchi Governor’s plan to recruit 20,000 youth

From Paul Orude Bauchi

A former member of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Honorable Aminu Tukur, has described the state government’s plan to recruit 20,000 youth to fight banditry in the state as insincere.

Governor Bala Mohammed had appreciated the bravery of the local vigilante and hunters in Lere community of Tafawa Balewa in who in collaboration with security agencies wasted 67 bamdits and rescued 29 victims.

Mohammed disclosed on Monday at the palace of the village head of Lere that his administration would recruit 20,000 youth that would be trained by police and military personnel to collaborate with other security agencies to root out the worrisome incursion of bandits into the State.

Reacting to the plan, Tukur explained that there was no sincerity in the proposed plan to recruit thousands of youth to fight bandits,alleging that the administration was promoting banditry in several ways.

“It’s the highest peak of insincerity,” the former member who represented Lere/Bula constituency in the state Assembly, told journalists im Bauchi on Tuesday.

“If he is willing to stop banditry let him start from his own district and arrest those who are responsible for creating more criminals who are in his own district.

“There is one Sarkin Bakam Dukuri, that Chief hunter who is being celebrated as someone who is all out to fight bandits but he is in fact creating more bandits than fighting them”.

The lawmaker alleged that the vigilante and hunters were allegedly arresting Fulani and innocent people and extracting huge some of money from them.

“The whole thing just has to do with the fact that they will just go to the market and arrest Fulani youth and take them to Yelwa Duguri and fine them heavily,” he alleged.

“Recently someone complained that they took four of his sons and the family had to pay the sum of N600,000 for the first born, N400,000 for the second and third sons respectively and N300,000 for third son before they were release

“On whose coffers was that money taken to?”

Tukur also raised the alarm that an in-law of the governor was operating a detention centre in the state, allegedly being run by one Umar Shayi, the younger brother to the governor’s wife.

“He (Shayi) has a detention centre of their own. It is there they detain people and fine them heavily before they are released,” he stated.

“If you are continually being fined and detained and got weakened by virtue of the economy what do you resort to? You become a criminal.

“So the plan to recruit 20,000 youths to fight crime is not sincere.
The first thing the governor has to do is to checkmate the activities of those so+called professional hunters that he is talking about.

“They are all out to collect money from innocent citizens. The fundamental truth is that what relationship does an ordinary hunter has to do with Zone 12 Police Command?

“This is somebody who will arrest without the notification of the immediate DPO that is assigned to him bypassing the office of the DPO, the ACP, the Commissioner of Police and head direct to zone 12. All these.of these arrests being done without the sanction of the DPO in the domiciled area.

“The conventional way is that a DPO of a given area has every right on whatever kind of security situation that takes place in his dormain not somebody who is an unauthorized uniform person carrying guns and harassing people”