Dikko Radda, governor of Katsina, says his administration will support communities to defend themselves against gunmen. 

The governor spoke on Friday at a town hall meeting with the theme, ‘Public Engagement: 2025 Citizens’ Budget Participation Process’, in Daura.

“We have come up with an initiative that for any community ready to defend itself, we will give them necessary support and training to engage criminals before the arrival of the security agents,”   Radda said.

“I went to a village, Tsamiyar-jino, where it took me two hours inside a jeep before I reached the village from the main road. So, if bandits attack such areas, from the time you inform the security, it will take them over two hours before they can respond to the distress call. By then, whatever is going to happen will have happened. They will have killed people and kidnapped others.

“I have said several times that the security agents cannot do this work alone. We don’t even have enough of them. I am surprised at the way we are dying in such a humiliating manner. We were told that anyone who died in defence of his family would enter paradise.

“You see five criminals attacking a community of 2,000 to 3,000 people, rape daughters, women and abducting others without any confrontation from the people of that community. If there are 100 youths in the community who confront them, they will not shoot more than three times without being captured with bare hands.

“Paying ransom doesn’t even prevent a hostage from being killed by abductors. Sometimes they collect the money and kill the victim.”

The governor said even community leaders connive with bandits to attack communities for monetary gains.

“There was a representative of the village head who collected N700,000 from bandits and allowed them to enter his area and killed about 30 people,” the governor said.

“There were women arrested, and a teacher serving as their informant, in fact, almost all the segments of people are involved in this act.”

Radda said his government has created a community security watch corps to protect residents.

“We trained them and attached them with the police and the army to work in synergy after providing them rifles, bulletproof vests, umbrellas, three sets of uniforms and shoes, among others,” he added.

The governor said the security operatives were equipped with 700 motorcycles, 65 Hilux cars and 10 armoured personnel carriers (APC).

“We pay N3 million for fuelling and maintenance of those vehicles to front-line local governments, and N1.5 million for vulnerable local governments and N750,000 for the remaining LGAs,” he said.

“We also purchased surveillance gadgets that you cannot find anywhere in the country. Our own is 5G and not the normal 3G.”

This is not the first time the governor has asked residents to defend themselves against bandits.

In February, Radda asked residents to “organise themselves in order to protect their communities from attacks by criminals”.