Katsina State Governor, Malam Dikko Umaru Radda, in this interview, gives perspectives on the insecurity in his state and in the country. He maintains that the problem is local, explaining why state police are needed to solve it. The Guardian was there.

Security is local and the governors have clamoured for opportunity and capacity to deal with it. What’s your position regarding the insecurity in your state and across the country?

For insecurity, you know, it’s a long story. It can take us a long time to explain; because when we took over the state in the last three years, about 24 local governments were under siege. In fact, the killings and the kidnapping every day were really mind-boggling. But you know, before I became governor, I came well prepared. So, we said security is our number one, number two, number three priority. And then we realised that it’s just a security issue; we have to localise it, it has to be community-based because we have very, very hard-to-reach areas in Katsina.

So, you can imagine if there are bandits attacking such remote places, no matter how proactive we are, it takes hours to reach such places. So, we came up with a mechanism to have people from those locations, who would be willing to give a helping hand before the coming of the security. Then we realised that the best thing we should do is to set up a security outfit made up of well-trained personnel.

How did you train them?

We trained them through the military and the police. We equipped them with what we were allowed to give them, that is the pump-action rifle. In the first instance, we supplied them with over 70 Hilux vehicles and over 1,500 motorcycles. We provided them with gadgets, protection, and what have you. We trained them for months, and it was the first thing we did before six months of assuming office. We launched 1,500 combat personnel.

But we selected them from the locations where violence was taking place. Why? Because they will give first-hand support and they need to work in conjunction with the security. We bought a lot of Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs). I think we bought more than 20.

We provided them with allowances. But with the setting up of the new security outfit, which we call Katsina Community Watch, it became one of the main vehicles that helped us to suppress insecurity. In fact, the criminals fear this Community Watch more than the other conventional security.

But the bandits and criminals keep coming?

Yes. The only setback for our Katsina Security Watch was that they don’t carry AK-47s. Their weapons don’t go far, and that makes it difficult for them. But with that, and the support of the conventional security agencies, and air power, we were able to reduce insecurity to the barest minimum.

We heard your government negotiated with the insurgents. Is that correct?

I’ve said it many times; I’m not going to negotiate with bandits. I will not invite any bandit to come for any negotiation. But if the bandits are under pressure and they want us to sit down and provide a roadmap towards peace, then I will be ready to listen to them.

But I will not take a phone and call a bandit and ask him to come and negotiate with me.

With our efforts, we were able to suppress it. But things got stuck. At a point, communities were meeting the bandits and negotiating on their own, and they approached us through the local government and said, ‘look sir, we have spoken to these people, and they are ready to stop these things, and we are ready to accept them back into society.’ I said it’s fine.

At least, if we had not put pressure on these people, they would not have asked for negotiation. But since they have asked for it, you can sit down with them, but I’m out of it. But I will not fight it, because I’m here sitting as a governor because of your mandate, and if that is your wish, you get it.

So, we allowed them to negotiate. So, at a point, particularly in Jibia, for one and a half years, nobody was killed. That place was a theatre zone, because we border Niger and some of them moved in from Niger Republic.

But I followed suit and now it’s one year and two months; nobody was killed in Safana, and all these frontline local governments. In fact, there was a time in Katsina State, for about six months, nothing happened until recently when we began to witness a breakdown of the peace deal in some local governments. In two of them, we know the person responsible; he was born there, his parents were born there, his grandparents were born there. So, all our security issues are really local.

There are stories of foreign terrorists coming into the country…

The issue of some people coming from other countries is a lie. Even if there are foreigners involved, 95 per cent of those perpetuating this act are our own people; they were born and bred here.

What is complicating the issue now, and even before, is compromise – compromise by the security agencies and even the communities because nobody will come and attack any village without information. It’s a lie to blame it on foreign terrorists.

You know there is this particular notorious person they are talking about, who attacked people just in the last two days or three. He’s being protected by the community. Yes, he’s being protected. You can imagine.

Last two weeks or last week, I called a high-level security meeting in this chamber. Do you know that five minutes after the meeting, the bandits’ leader called some people and told them what we had just discussed in the meeting. All the things we discussed at the meeting, he was aware of it all.

So, how are you going to deal with this situation? Sometimes if police are ambushed, maybe one of them has given out information. When the military is ambushed, maybe one of them has given information to the insurgents. So, this is the situation we are in, where a bandits’ leader knows where we are; he has more information than we have. You know that if we don’t get the cooperation of the people, we cannot end this. It’s really a difficult and dicey situation we are in.

You agree that security is local. How can we get communities and leaders who compromise their positions to pay for their sins?

There’s hardly anybody you can trust. This is the situation I am in. And I’m not the one to carry the gun and go. And sometimes I even go along with the security to attack these guys. But by the time you get there, you will meet empty houses. They have all run away because they got the information that you were coming.

And sometimes, if security were informed of an attack, when they go there, they ambush them because they had prior information that they were coming. There was one local leader from the community where there was an attack. Someone called him and he sent me the recorded message.

If he changed his clothes, the person who called him would tell him the colour of the clothes he had changed. If after an hour he went back to his house and changed to another set of clothes, the caller would call and tell him he had changed clothes. So, it means that people around him are spying on him and feeding the criminals.

This is the situation we are in. And that is why I have said it over and again that we need state police. And the time is now. We could not give this local security outfit sophisticated weapons because there is no law backing the outfit. Some people have been talking about politics, saying the governors are going to abuse the state police…

You think the fear of governors abusing state police is misplaced?

Before I became a governor, I used to nurse that fear. But the issue is I can only be a governor for eight years. So, if I use the security apparatus against anybody, that means someone who comes later will also use it against me.

So, it’s not about politics. And are we not in Nigeria where a sitting president lost election when he had control of the military and the police? So, what about an ordinary state governor? Will he say he cannot lose election because he has state police? I believe Nigeria is far more sophisticated and there are certain things people can do and get away with. But we are here talking about the lives of people. The money I invested in securing lives, I could have expended it on projects. (The Guardian)

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