Following the recent onslaught of over 43 rice farmers in Borno State by Boko Haram insurgents, the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum and Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has stated that some Boko Haram escapees from the North-Eastern part of the country are infiltrating other parts of Nigeria as bandits and kidnappers.
Fayemi, while speaking on Channels Televison’s Sunday Politics programme on Sunday, December 6, 2020, said that the insecurity in the country is not limited to only Borno State or North-East as there are cases of banditry in the North-West as well as kidnapping in the Southern part of the country.
While some concerned persons are of the opinion that President Muhammadu Buhari should declare a state of emergency on insecurity in the North-East, the Ekiti state governor called for a more holistic approach to ending this menace by giving more powers to state governments to handle the security of their domains.
Fayemi said, “If a state of emergency were to be declared, I have no opinion on that, we haven’t discussed state of emergency as far as the Governors’ Forum is concerned. And that is not something that our colleagues who are at the receiving end of the insurgency have proposed to us. Governor Babagana Zulum or our North-East colleagues have not said anything about state of emergency.”
The chairman further stated that, “Insurgency is not limited to Borno State. We will be making a mistake if we do not draw a correlation between what is going on in Borno State and what is happening in other parts of the country – banditry, kidnapping, militancy, they are inextricably intertwined. Some of the insurgents that escaped from the Boko Haram territory are the ones prosecuting the banditry in the North-West, some of them are involved in the kidnapping in the South-West.
“ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) insurgents coming down from Sudan, from Niger Republic are involved in what is going on. How many states are you going to declare state of emergency on then? So, we must take a holistic view on this.”
