Insecurity in Nigeria: Declare state of emergency in Zamfara, FG told

Worried by the recent escalation of bandit attacks and kidnappings resulting in deaths and displacement of several communities in Zamfara State, the Democracy Watch Initiative (DWI) has called on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the state.

Leading 27 other non-governmental-organizations, the DWI at a press conference read by its Spokesman, Sanusi Ali Mohammed, in Abuja said the call became necessary given the regrettably alarming deterioration of security situation in the State in the last two months.

The DWI noted that in spite of the previous government’s efforts to curtail insecurity in Zamfara, the situation in the state has been steadily deteriorating with the state capital, Gusau, already on the verge of being completely overrun by bandits.

He said, “We note that since June this year the audacious regularity of acts of violence perpetrated by the bandits and kidnappers who operate freely and at will have deteriorated with horrifying instances of women and children being raped, communities displaced, people kidnapped for ransom, citizens denied access to farmlands and many others, brutalized, traumatized and killed on a daily basis.

“Killers and other criminals appear to have sensed a paralysing vacuum at the highest levels of leadership in the State, hunger continues stalking millions of homes. Inflation is making life difficult by the day as people are losing sources of livelihood.

“Even the State House of Assembly had expressed worries over the development, lamenting that it appears there is no government in the state owing to the disdainful way the bandits are having a field day in their killing spree”.

The DWI condemned what it called, the way and manner the Governor Dauda Lawal-led administration was handling security issues in the state.

“We call for the immediate proclamation of a state of emergency in Zamfara State because the people have shed enough tears and blood in the last two months without an appropriate response from a state government that appears to be helpless in the face of this mounting security crisis.

“We call the attention of the Federal Government to the reality that only the declaration of a state of emergency can assure the people of Zamfara that they have not been abandoned at the mercy of a rampaging banditry and kidnappings by a state government that has resigned itself to live with rapists and murderers,” the Group said.