Group Faults Security Challenges in Zamfara
The Democracy Watch Initiative, DWI has requested that the Federal Government proclaim a state of emergency in Zamfara State due to its concern over the recent uptick in bandit attacks and kidnappings resulting in fatalities and the relocation of numerous communities.
Sanusi Ali Mohammed, the DWI’s spokesman, read a statement to the media in Abuja on behalf of 27 other non-governmental organizations, saying that the call was essential due to the State’s security situation’s extremely alarming worsening over the past two months.
Despite the previous administration’s efforts to reduce insecurity in Zamfara, the DWI reported that the state’s situation has continuously worsened, with the state capital, Gusau, already on the edge of being overtaken by bandits.
He said, “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 have deteriorated with horrifying instances of women and children being raped, communities displaced, people kidnapped for ransom, citizens denied access to farmlands and many others, brutalized, traumatized and killed daily.
“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”.
The DWI criticized the way the state’s security issues were being handled by Governor Dauda Lawal-led administration.
“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,” the Group stated.
