Just like Shiekh Ahmad Gumi rightly opined, a former Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has urged the Federal Government, to explore the non-kinetic approach in its bid to deal with the crisis of banditry in Nigeria.
He stated this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today monitored by TRIBUNE ONLINE on Tuesday.
“If I am in position, it is not too late to use non-kinetic measures in negotiating with bandits, giving them a promising future.
“Let us retain them. Many of them are very intelligent, many of them are able-bodied,” he stated.
According to him, the military spending on equipment far outweighed the approach of negotiation.
According to him, millions of out-of-school children in Northern Nigeria have become a “production factory for banditry” in the country.
He, therefore, urged the government to negotiate with bandits “for the purpose of resettling, rehabilitating and retraining them”.
“The more skills you are able to give to the largest number of them, the less the propensity for them to go back (to crime) if they are assured that a promising future awaits them after going through the deradicalisation processes and skills’ training.
“At the end of the day, the amount of money we are spending on the Armed Forces to confront these people, it looks like their number is endless because in the bush we have thousands of groups, particularly in the North-West and North-East,” he added.
