Why banditry is festering in the North – Ezekwesili

*There is a “strange incestuous relationship between government and abductors.”

FORMER Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has said insurgency, kidnapping, banditry and allied crimes are festering in the Northern states because their governors keep acquiescing to them.

Ezekwesili said Northern governors keep rebranding terrorists as bandits, adding that they are now trying to coerce the media into the act.

The social and education activist spoke in reaction to Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle’s position that bandits deserve sympathy, urging his northern counterparts to enter into negotiations with them.

The former minister, who wrote on Twitter, said, “They were deliberate in coercing the Media to support their Rebranding of Terrorists as “Bandits”. Yesterday, I read that a Governor of Zamfara said, “Bandits deserve sympathy from Nigerians”. A man whose people are being killed daily by his rebranded terrorists.”

 She also alleged that there is a “strange incestuous relationship between government and abductors.”

Ezekwesili said the relationship had enabled the industry of abduction to flourish.

She lamented that the friendship with abductors is being thrown in the face of citizens by those in authority.

“There’s now an industry of abduction flourishing on basic market principles of demand and supply. It is enabled by a strange incestuous relationship between government and abductors. Folks in Federal and State Governments are throwing this friendship in faces of Citizens. SHAME,” she said.