“You should spare no effort in breaking the backbone of these savage mass killers and don’t hesitate to attack them with merciless intensity until they are crushed and ultimately defeated.”These is the marching order which President Muhammadu Buhari handed down to the security agencies and communities on the renewed attacks by kidnappers and bandits in parts of the country, with the latest in Enugu, Zamfara, Adamawa, Katsina and Kaduna States.
Reacting to the recent reports of heightened acts of violence and kidnappings after a period of relative inactivity, the President said: “in view of the unpredictability of the security situation, our security forces and the communities affected should be ever more alert because these murderous and remorseless criminals would take advantage of your complacency and strike again.”
He said that the kidnappers and bandits should under no circumstances be allowed to hold the country to ransom on account of security loopholes which they seek to exploit to strike at their victims.
Buhari reminded security personnel that the criminals always look for loopholes in the security system in order to remain in business and active, stressing that they should not be given space to achieve this diabolical objective by pre-empting them.
“Complacency is a hidden or unnoticed enemy that we shouldn’t take for granted, because doing so could weaken our strategies.”
The President said that the affected communities also have a responsibility to help the security agencies with the critically important human intelligence in order to stop the bandits in their tracks.
“The bandits maintain networks of informants among the communities they attack. By identifying and reporting these informants to the authorities, it would be by far easier to foil the bandits before they reach their intended targets.”
