Bello Turji Kachalla (or simply Turji), is a 30-year-old bandit/terrorist who has constituted himself and his thousands of gangsters into a nightmare for the people of Nigeria’s North-West, especially Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Niger states.

He Is to the North-West what the late Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, was to the North-East. The difference is that while Shekau cloaked his terrorist activities in Islamic jihad, Turji is strictly a gang leader and bandit warlord who has sought to carve out an empire out of the vast ungoverned spaces of the North-West and North-Central.

Turji is one of the bandit leaders believed to have been contracted, financed, armed and camped in Zamfara forests by evil politicians who intended to use him and his cohorts from all over the Sahel to destabilise the Goodluck Jonathan regime if Muhammadu Buhari lost the 2015 presidential election. This much was disclosed by a former All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain, Kawu Baraje, a narrative that has not been debunked.

Following the victory of his alleged sponsors and their abandonment of the terrorists, the latter resorted to cattle rustling and later, kidnapping for ransom. Over the past 10 years or so, they have grown in strength and power, with thousands of motorcycle-mounted, well-kitted men armed with AK-47 assault rifles. They attack villages and outskirts of bigger towns, destroying homes, killing and abducting people for ransom, raping and enslaving captives.

They and other smaller independent bandit gangs are responsible for the scores of school abductions and seizures of highway travellers. These bandits have dared the might of the Nigerian state, attacking the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, in Kaduna; shooting down a Nigerian Air Force, NAF, jet; carrying out the Abuja-Kaduna train attack of March 2022; and invading the Kuje Prisons in Abuja in July 2022.

All efforts by the governors of the embattled states to bribe Turji to accept “amnesty” have failed because he always reneged on agreements after receiving huge payments.

In view of these, his recent video-recorded offer for “reconciliation” must be discountenanced. Criminals and terrorists usually make such offers when the heat turned on them by the armed forces becomes unbearable.

At all costs, Bello Turji and his gang members should cease to terrorise our citizens. The insecurity they constitute must be brought to an end. There is no basis for “reconciliation” with terrorists and criminals who have claimed thousands of lives and threatened the territorial integrity of this great nation.

Bello Turji and his bandits must fall to the fire-power of our troops. We have no jail that can accommodate and feed them or courts that can try them.

Nigerians must synergise with the armed forces to exterminate all security threats facing us, ensuring they never happen again. (Vanguard Editorial)