Katsina Counts Communities Destroyed By Bandits

Katsina State Government says it is documenting the number of communities ravaged by bandits to provide psychosocial and economic support to them.

This was disclosed Special Adviser to Governor Masari on security matters, Ibrahim Ahmad-Katsina.

According to him, this will help tailor government's target to address  trauma the victims went through.

He said that a committee headed by the Deputy Governor, Mannir Yakubu, is currently undertaking the census of banditry-affected victims in the state.

“This is to ensure that the victims have not become psychologically vulnerable, and thus avert another cycle of violence after the end of banditry.

“We are applying simple psychological measures to manage the perception of the children of the banditry-affected victims.

“This is because, the children of those affected by banditry will surely like to take revenge, so that’s why we want to support them to overcome the trauma.

“We will provide the widows with gainful employment, skills and trades, and their children will be taken to schools,” the special adviser said.

Ahmad-Katsina said that the new approach to tackling banditry adopted by government has been recording successes.

According to him, part of the strategy is building people’s confidence to confront the bandits or report to security agencies without fear.

“We have realized that these bandits are also human beings like us, hence we want to disallow them from cutting short our lives.

“We are not only talking, we know what we are doing, relative peace is gradually returning to the state based on several factors.

“We have realized that what we are facing in Katsina is community banditry, most of the bandits and their locations are known.

“We understood the dynamics of the threats which made it easier for us to deal with the problem and identify the factors responsible and what needs to be done to nip the problem.

“We first reached out to the communities and developed their capacity in intelligence gathering, community policing, and community effort,” he said.

He added that the state government had trained 1,100 highly educated community vigilante corps, assisting their communities to survive.

Ahmad-Katsina pointed out that through this approach, members of various banditry-affected communities have risen to their responsibilities by not waiting for the security forces.