It is still celebrations galore in Kaduna Central as constituents rejoice over the Banks, Insurance and other Financial Institutions (BOFIA) Act and Assets Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) Act sponsored by Senator Uba Sani (APC Kaduna Central), signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari. The BOFIA Act, which updated the outdated Nigerian banking laws was actually the very first to be signed into law by President Buhari in the present dispensation.
While this fanfare lasts, there is one important advice that the lawmaker voluntarily offered late last year, that is quite strategic to the search for solutions to the banditry and kidnapping on the Kaduna-Abuja road.Now that the situation has escalated, it should embolden stakeholders to explore new options.
Sometime in November 2020, major national dailies had widely reported an advice by Senator Uba Sani on insecurity, especially on the activities of bandits along the Kaduna-Abuja road. He suggested that the Federal government should carry out a one-month intensive operation on Kaduna-Abuja road to degrade the bandits and kidnappers.
Moving on, the lawmaker, in his characteristic bluntness, said “anybody, no matter how highly placed, found to be aiding and abetting criminality along the road should be brought to book”.
Senator Uba Sani has repeatedly drawn attention of stakeholders in the country to the escalating insecurity and the need to take appropriate actions. He has so far been tireless in this regard. At one point, an obviously furious Senator Uba Sani, warned that the regularity of attacks and killings around Kaduna communities and highway were going beyond tolerable limits. This was just as some public commentators picked out his famous quotes on insecurity on the social media space, which all went viral.
Taking cognisance of the loss of lives and property, especially in some parts of his constituency, he openly condemned the renewed wave of attacks on communities along the Kaduna-Abuja road. The high point of Uba Sani’s response was encapsulated in a terse message, in which he called for immediate end to non-state actors holding the nation to ransom. The lawmaker hit the nail on the head when he captured the grim picture of the bandits and kidnappers activities. “A situation where criminals with access to instruments of violence operate with ease, is certainly a major cause for concern to anybody interested in the security and welfare of the people”, he was reported as emphasizing.
In a tone that betrayed subdued fury, he noted that the continued siege on the Abuja-Kaduna major expressway by bandits has become a direct affront on the will and capacity of the Federal Government and the entire national security assets. The implications of non-state actors stockpiling arms and unleashing their terror on the populace was also another situation he said has the potentials of giving outlaws a free-wheeling space. He therefore warned, in the strongest terms, that criminal elements should not be allowed to “annex” an estimated 180km strategic gateway in the country.
Senator Sani said the time has come to take the fight to the bandits and kidnappers and reassert the Federal Government’s monopoly of the coercive instruments of state. “Enough is indeed enough,” he fumed. He went a notch further to ask the Federal Government to work with the Kaduna state government to “uproot” the bandits from both the Kaduna-Abuja highway and Local Government areas.
Evidently, Senator Uba Sani has been both vocal and consistent in offering voluntary pieces of advice on the way out of these security challenges and it is about time for stakeholders to take a second look at his well-publicized list of suggestions, notably the Kaduna-Abuja road “intensive” operation. Significantly, the call for a “one-month intensive” security operation on the Kaduna-Abuja road is far more relevant and urgent today than it was in November 2020, when Senator Uba Sani first gave that advice. This is given the reality at hand.
Without prejudice to the efforts of the security and intelligence services, there is the urgent need to carry out that “one-month intensive” security operation. The frequency of kidnapping and killings warrant renewed vigor in the fight against these bandits and kidnappers. There is still hope in the ability of security and intelligence services to deal a fatal blow on these savages and return the peace for which the Kaduna-Abuja road has been known for decades.
While the lawmaker deserves commendation for such forward-looking advice, which has become more relevant today than it was one whole year ago, stakeholders would do well to encourage security agents to make this move.
That Senator Uba Sani has not stopped making suggestions on saving lives and returning peace to the beleaguered communities and the Kaduna-Abuja road is testimony of his sensitivity to safety and security of innocent Nigerians.
Dambatta writes from Abuja
