Insecurity: Tinubu urged to declare state of emergency in Zamfara
The Democracy Watch Initiative, DWI, has called on President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in Zamfara State over worsening insecurity.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Monday, the DWI spokesman, Sanusi Mohammed, said over 400 villages and communities are under the control of bandits.
According to Mr Mohammed, the recent escalation of bandit attacks and kidnappings resulted in deaths and displacement of several communities and residents.
The statement reads in part, “We note that since June this year, the audacious regularity of acts of violence perpetrated by the bandits and kidnappers who operate freely and at will has deteriorated, with horrifying instances of women and children being raped, communities displaced, people kidnapped for ransom, citizens denied access to farmlands, and many others, brutalised, traumatised, and killed on a daily basis.
“Killers and other criminals appear to have sensed a paralysing vacuum at the highest levels of leadership in the state, hunger continues stalking millions of homes. Inflation is making life difficult by the day as people are losing sources of livelihood.
“Even the State House of Assembly had expressed worries over the development, lamenting that it appears there is no government in the state owing to the disdainful way the bandits are having a field day in their killing spree.
“Without a doubt, Zamfara State has become a colony of banditry in the whole country, with the rate of merciless killings, kidnappings, and rape becoming very uncontrollable.
Read Also:
“Records have clearly indicated that there are thousands of widows and orphans roaming the streets aimlessly due to banditry that killed their husbands and fathers, thereby increasing the volume of almajeris.
“By some specifics, in addition to the daily unrecorded incidences of attacks, four policemen were killed in an attack in Bungudu Local Government Area on July 10 and 24, and seven soldiers were reportedly killed as bandits attacked Kangon Garacce, in Dangulbi community of Maru Local Government Area.”
“This was as 31 villagers were killed by bandits in Janbako and Sakida villages, Maradun Local Government Area, the following weekend. And just last Thursday, armed bandits abducted twenty-five people in Boko village in Zurmi local government area, including twenty-four women and one male adult. The women were abducted in their homes when the armed bandits invaded the community,” DWI added.
“A few weeks earlier, some policemen were killed close to Bungudu and a few days later, some innocent citizens were reportedly killed at Boko village in Zurmi local government, the same situation exists in Mada, Wonaka, Ruwan Bore.
“Also in Bukkuyum and Anka, the wave of insecurity is blowing all over the state, and the PDP-led government under Dauda Lawal is doing nothing but lamentation, which is a sign of failure on the side of the government.
“We call for the immediate proclamation of a state of emergency in Zamfara State because the people have shed enough tears and blood in the last two months without an appropriate response from a state government that appears to be helpless in the face of this mounting security crisis.
“We call the attention of the Federal Government to the reality that only the declaration of a state of emergency can assure the people of Zamfara that they have not been abandoned at the mercy of a rampaging banditry and kidnappings by a state government that has resigned itself to live with rapists and murderers,” Mr Mohammed added.
