While most governors in troubled North East and North West have resorted to negotiate with criminal elements, Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello said he would never contemplate going through such a path.
Bello said he will never negotiate with criminals either bandits, kidnappers or terrorists.
He spoke on Wednesday on Channels TV, breakfast programme Sunrise Daily, monitored by NewsSpecng.
Citing an instance of a particular amnesty offered to a renowned bandit group in Nassarawa state after a particular top politician stepped in, only for them to go back.
He also said strong political will was required to tackle security challenges of any type.
He said what he has been doing in Kogi state is to deal ruthlessly with crime perpetrators and their sponsors, rather than negotiating with them.
He also revealed that the North Central Governors have absolute faith in the police.
Bello who was clearing the air on how the military is performing the job of the police in dealing with bandits and criminals in the North Central, said the military are not for permanent occupation.
He said that having seen how effective the military has been under the command of Major General M. G. Ali, the military was only deployed for training purposes thereby wanding off bandits and criminals hibernating in the states.
He said that “the special forces cannot occupy a space or land for too long. They just come in, do clearance operation and leave for another destination. Police are not trained to go inside the bush. Even though recently, the police men have come up with special forces that could equally go into the bush to fetch out the criminals.”
Explaining the importance of the police, Bello said “the relative peace we are enjoying in the cities and on our highways are been manned by the police.
He said one of the implemented decisions reached during a meeting with all the North Central Governors in Nasarawa state which the IGP was also present was the deployment of special forces of both the military, police and armed forces.
“Today, we have the Airforce base in Nasarawa, Benue. So also, the Nigeria Armed Forces deployed special forces to assist us. Today, they are doing excellently well”.
