February 7, 2024
Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State said poverty, unemployment, and lack of education are the major reasons insecurity is ravaging the Northwestern part of the country.
Sani stated this in an interview with Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
According to Sani, the issue of banditry and kidnapping in the north-west is different from that of insurgency in the north-east.
He said, “The North-West crisis has to do with banditry and kidnapping; it is an economic problem. When you look at the situation critically, you will agree with me that most of those bandits always kidnap innocent people and ask for ransom.
“And whenever they are given money, they will release the victims in many cases, and in some cases, when there is a delay, they end up taking the lives of those victims.
“And when you look at the situation, you also look at the problems of poverty, unemployment, hopelessness, and lack of education, particularly in the Northwestern part of Nigeria. That is the reason why a lot of these incidents happen.”
Sani insisted that statistics have proven that a greater percentage of people living in the North-West are living below the poverty line, adding that a lot of out-of-school children in the country are also from the North-West zone.
He said, “The last time I checked, and you can confirm from the SDGs recent report, you would agree with me that about 80 to 90% of the people living in the Northwestern part of Nigeria are living below the poverty line;
“…and of course, if you look at the statistics of out-of-school children, you can see that a lot of the are from the Northwestern part of Nigeria.”
The governor added that bringing the criminals and pardoning them when they surrender is only one aspect of the non-kinetic approach to ending the insecurity, which, he said, is not the most important aspect.
Sani noted that the most important approach to ending the menace is to look at the condition of the people generally, which includes poverty and unemployment.
