Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has said the insurgency in the North West is far more serious than Boko Haram crisis going by the growing number of the people killed and kidnapped.
The governor said this Thursday during the weekly briefing organised by the Presidential Communication Media Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He underscored the need for coordinated solution and single-minded attention to defeat what he “a massive monster” that used better equipment than our security forces.
El-Rufai, while reacting to a question on banditry and kidnapping in the North West, said: “I am persuaded that the insurgency in the North West is far more serious than Boko Haram, both in terms of the numbers of the people affected. I have shown you the numbers in Kaduna. I can assure you that the numbers on Zamfara, and Katsina are up to three times this if they are keeping taps. The numbers in Sokoto, Niger, and Kebbi will be about this.
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“We are talking of tens of thousands of people getting killed, getting kidnapped. It is far more serious than Boko Haram. The only thing is that these guys don’t occupy territory, they are in the forest and ungoverned spaces. So, they do not attract the kind of single-minded attention that Boko Haram does. And because Boko Haram’s ideology is religious, intentionally religious, it elicits more passion but really, this is a far more serious problem.
“Because, this is a situation largely in which people of about the same ethnicity, same religion are killing each other, stealing each other’s property. Creating an industry out of criminality. It’s very, very serious and it requires single- minded attention.
He said before the end of May 2022, Kaduna will be covered with CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology that would enable easy crime investigation.
The Safe City project, he said, is powered by the Chinese company, Huawei, and others.
The governor said his administration would sack more underqualified secondary school teachers across the state this year as 7,700 had already been employed to take over from them.
El-Rufai, who said some secondary school teachers only have primary school certificates, his government had hired more people than it had sacked in the last five years.
The governor, who said his overreaching goal was to raise the standard of the public schools in Kaduna, stated that although his son was enrolled into a public school, he reverted to homeschooling due to threats of kidnapping which might put other children at risk.
“We have hired over 40,000 civil servants in the last five year, most of them being nurses, midwives and teachers,” the governor explained.
Daily Trust