Buhari intervenes in Zamfara banditry, summons security chiefs, ministers’ meeting

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj.Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd.), to urgently summon a meeting with some ministers and other security chiefs on the illegal mining and mindless killings in Zamfara State.

This is coming after the Speaker of the Zamfara State House of Assembly, Nasir Magarya, had written a letter to Buhari in which he appealed to the president to intervene and stop the incessant killings by bandits in the state.

Other ministers invited for the meeting are Minister of Defence, Maj.Gen. Bashir Magashi (rtd); Minister of Interior, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola; and Minister of Mines and Steel, Mr. Olamilekan Adegbite.

A statement by media adviser to the President, Mr Femi Adesina, named others to attend the meeting as the directors-general of the Department of State Services (DSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

It stated that the proposed meeting was the President’s immediate response to rising cases of banditry in Zamfara State.

The President ordered that there must be a clear pathway to ending the resurgent banditry in the state.

It noted that the President was also worried by the scale of lawlessness aggravated by illegal miners harvesting resources they had no legal rights to exploit.

Official statistics, the statement noted, indicated more than 20,000 such miners were undermining this important part of the economy, operating in a manner extraordinarily harmful and destructive.

The meeting, according to the President, is expected to address these and associated issues of corruption, government oversight and lawlessness.