▪︎As Sen. Ndume opposes blanket amnesty for bandits
Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has warned that the deteriorating security situation in the country could lead to a civil war.
“It is time for us to come together as a nation in order to avert a civil war,” Fani-Kayode said on Channels Television’s “Sunday Politics”.
According to Chief Fani-Kayode, Nigeria was on the brink of war, and only coming together to reason could stop the nation from slipping into civil unrest.
Read him: “This country is on the brink of war; the security situation is so bad that it’s not just good enough for us to get up and be throwing stones… We’ve got to proffer solutions to the problems that we are all facing.
“This country is divided now, divided into regional, ethnic and religious lines, we cannot run away from that fact… There is no point in going on about who is right and who is wrong, it’s time for us to come together to talk to one another.
“Northerners should talk to Southerners, southerners should talk to northerners, Christians should talk to Muslims, APC should talk to PDP and APGA should be included and anybody else who is a leader, every stakeholder in this country must come together because what we are facing is a situation which might cause a very brutal, bloody civil war.”
On the issue of his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) following a meeting with chieftains of the ruling party, the former minister said he was only discussing political matters with his friends.
He said the meeting availed them an opportunity to work together to build bridges within the political sphere.
Fani-Kayode reiterated that he never left the Peoples Democratic Party, stressing that he had close friends on both sides and had always believed in the “cross-fertilization of ideas”, and in working closely with even those he might not agree with politically.
In a related development, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Army, Ali Ndume, said the provision of blanket amnesty to bandits had the tendency to breed new forms of criminality in the country.
Speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s “Sunday Politics”, Senator Ndume said “I don’t think blanket amnesty is the solution because if you do that another form of criminality may emerge hoping that the government will bring them to the negotiating table.”
According to him, the government must tackle the banditry situation with the carrot and stick approach.
Ndume said the government must strive to get to the root of the situation to ascertain what the true cause of the banditry problem was.
He further suggested that the government should form a committee of eminent persons “who can reach out to the grassroots and get to proffer lasting solutions to the issue.”
He said the military needed to be better funded to win the war against insurgency.
According to him: “This is not a conventional war; we are not fighting another country. We have the forces on the ground but they need what it takes especially modern equipment for surveillance, monitoring, and intelligence gathering.”
Ndume said the funding of the Nigerian Armed Forces should be placed as a national priority, stressing that if the military was not properly armed, then “they cannot effectively prosecute the war against the insurgents within the northeast.” (Channels TV)
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