… Says More Monarchs May Go Too
Abdulaziz Yari, Zamfara state governor has attributed cases of banditry and terrorism in the state to the connivance of traditional rulers.
A development, he noted led to the recent deposition of seven of them.
Yari who was at the Presidential Villa Abuja on Monday to finalise plans for the last National Economic Council NEC meeting for the year with the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, alleged that some of the traditional rulers were in the habit of collecting money from bandits and paying lip service security within their domains.
He warned that more monarchs will be deposed if found culpable in such crimes.
He said, “What we are trying to do is to kind of teach them a lesson because the problem we have in Zamfara State and in the North-West is kind of peculiar.
“Some of the traditional rulers are supporting banditry activities or taking money from them in some cases boosting their relationship; that is very dangerous to us; we gave you trust to manage people through tradition and then you are taking part, directly or indirectly, that is not acceptable in anyway.
“Henceforth any one that we find culpable in this regard, definitely, he must face punishment. And we are trying to use every avenue that we have to ensure that we fish out those that are within us – within the traditional rulers and outside. That is why we hired intelligence; we hired the civilian JTF, so that they can help us by giving us the details.
“For instance, we have about 2, 600 men and women that are working against these bandits, still they are not enough because of the terrain. The terrain is not known to them, so we have employed sons of the soil that will lead the security agencies to their doorsteps and we have been getting very serious results to our advantage.
“I can assure you that more traditional rulers will go if they are found wanting because if you are talking about the general populace, we are almost getting to 5 million and the total number of traditional rulers are about 300, so if we find any one! Anyone! Underline the word ‘anyone,’ found wanting, he would go!”
The Governor who declined to comment on some of the political crisis within his state, said the last National Economic Council meeting to wrap up the year 2018 would hold on December 14th.
Yari noted that the NEC would review the performance of the economy from January 2018 to date to guage how well the country performed in the outgoing year.
