Kaduna Governor Attributes Insecurity To Poverty, Unemployment

The Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, has said the main causes of insecurity in the Northwestern part of the country are poverty, unemployment, hopelessness, and lack of education. 

He started this during his appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, noting that the issue of banditry and kidnapping in the North-west is different from that of insurgency in the North-East.

According to the governor, “The North-West crisis has to do with banditry and kidnapping, it is an economic problem. When you look at the situation critically, you will agree with me that most of those bandits always kidnap innocent people and ask for ransom and whenever they are given money, they will release the victims in many cases and in some cases when there is a delay they end up taking the lives of those victims.

“And when you look at the situation, you also look at the problem of poverty, unemployment, hopelessness, and lack of education particularly in the Northwestern part of Nigeria, that is the reason why a lot of these incidents happen.” 

According to the governor, data shows that a higher proportion of individuals in the North-West live below the poverty line, and many of the nation’s out-of-school youth originate from this region as well.

“The last time I checked, and you can confirm from the SDG’s recent report, you would agree with me that about 80 to 90% of the people living in the Northwestern part of Nigeria are living below the poverty line and of course, if you look at the statistics of out of school children, you can see that a lot of the are from the Northwestern part of Nigeria,” he said.

According to Governor Sani, apprehending offenders and offering them pardons upon their surrender is but one facet of the non-kinetic strategy for reducing insecurity; it is by no means the most crucial.

As he pointed out, the most crucial strategy for putting an end to the threat is to consider people’s overall conditions, which include unemployment, poverty, and hopelessness.