Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Garba Shehu, has said the killings in Southern Kaduna are political motivated.
Control TV earlier reported that Gunmen suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, invaded Kukum Daji village in the Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State, killing no fewer than 21 residents.
Reacting to this, Garba Shehu, in a statement on Tuesday, said that the situation in Kaduna is more complicated than what people see or think.
He lamented that the security agencies in the state need to wake up to the rising insecurity and improve their intelligence capabilities.
“The Presidency wishes to state that the problem of insecurity in Southern Kaduna State is more complicated than many people are willing to admit,” the statement read.
“From available records, Southern Kaduna enjoys comprehensive security deployments, including the Army, Special Forces of both the Army and the Air Force, surveillance aircraft by the Air Force and mobile police units that are on the ground on a 24-hour basis to forestall criminality and keep the peace.
“But unlike other parts of the country, the problem of Southern Kaduna is more complicated than many critics are ready to acknowledge and understand.
“From available security records, the problem in Southern Kaduna is an evil combination of politically-motivated banditry, revenge killings and mutual violence by criminal gangs acting on ethnic and religious grounds.”
“It is a situation in which one criminal group will kill a member of another criminal group out of ethnic and religious motivations, which in turn leads to the eruption of revenge and counter-revenge, thereby making the job of the security personnel deployed to protect lives more difficult,” he said.
“We note that revenge and counter-revenge only creates a circle of violence, thereby making everyone else unsafe, especially innocent people.”
“What is required is for the local authorities to radically improve their intelligence capabilities so that security agencies will be alerted in a timely manner to enable them forestall any planned attack,” he added.
(C) Control TV 2020.
