Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State on Thursday warned that arming state security outfits would not be enough to put a stop to insecurity in the country.
This comes as a reaction to his Benue State counterpart, Samuel Ortom who issued a one month to the Federal Government to grant the state’s Community Volunteer Guards a licence to bear AK-47s. (READ HERE)
But featuring on Channel’s Sunrise Daily, El-Rufai, said: ”People are speaking simplistically when they say ‘I want to get an AK-47 for my Amotekun. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.
El-Rufai said that doing so would amount to a simplistic approach to combatting “sophisticated” non-state actors that sometimes ”outgun the military.”
“Local security networks can only provide local intelligence. They do not have the firearms to face these guys [bandits].
”These guys sometimes even rout the military. They are very well-armed. They are getting arms that are sophisticated. Sometimes, they outgun the military. Those vigilantes are not up to scratch.”
The governor, who is known to have openly canvassed carpet bombing of terrorists and bandits’ camps as a way to contain non-state actors, said there have been positive changes in the security of his state in the past six weeks.
He said that the latest tactics, including “bombing’’ of bandits’ hideouts, deployed by the military were reducing the level of attacks in the state.
El-Rufai said: “I’m happy to say in the last six weeks, there has been a change because the military has now deployed special forces here. And they have taken the bandits out. The air force is bombing them. All the things that we asked for two to three years ago are now happening.
“If that had been done three years ago, we would have been in a completely different environment. Because three years ago, they were much fewer in numbers, we knew their camps, we knew everything about them.”
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