Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State has revealed why bandits have continued to attack schools in the North.
Speaking when he featured on a Channels Television programme on Friday, Fayemi said the reason bandits keep targeting schools and abducting schoolchildren is the lack of investment in technology to secure schools in the country.
The chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) noted that bandits can be traced with the right technology and the political will to bring them to justice.
He said: “We need to at least take some basic precautionary measures by providing — across the length and breadth of our country — schools with perimeter fences. We can also put vigilante, security operatives in those schools.
“But more than anything else, we need to invest in technology, because these people are not ghosts — those who are responsible for this. We know where they are. People can track them, but somehow, we appear a little bit handicapped in responding effectively to the menace of criminals and bandits in the country. Instead, we’ve provided silly excuses by attaching it to the ethnicity of whoever is culpable, rather than focusing on the crime committed.”
Fayemi also asked the Federal Government to allow operatives of the Western Nigeria Security Network, codename Amotekun, to carry sophisticated weapons.
The governor said Amotekun operatives are not able to function properly because they’re not allowed to carry weapons.
He also canvassed for multi-level policing in this country, which he said would curb the rising insecurity in th country.
He said: “States ultimately may need to take greater charge of security within their own jurisdiction. Some of us, and the Nigerian Governor’s Forum specifically, have argued consistently in the past, that we need multi-level policing in this country, and multilevel policing for us is not a revocation of federal police
“It is a complimentary level of police in addition to federal police. When you do that, you would also not have a situation in which there is no trust. You need to have mechanisms to deal with aberrant usage of local or state police. We have the Nigerian police council which hardly functions.
“Amotekun is working, but it’s not working optimally because they’re not even allowed to carry weapons. So, what’s the use of an Amotekun that cannot confront a kidnapper in the bush because the kidnapper is carrying an AK-47 and he’s carrying a stick? Let’s be real; it’s not going to work.
“As an intelligence officer, if you’re targeted because they know you’re the one providing information to the mainstream security agencies, you’re under threat.”