In 2016, 2017, and 2019, the Katsina State Government reached a peace accord with the gunmen.
Despite the agreement, localities in Katsina, President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state, are still being assaulted, with citizens being kidnapped and/or killed.
According to a source in the state administration, some of the’repentant’ bandits who surrendered their weapons and ammo were hired by the government and paid at least N100,000 per month through the office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Security.
“They were employed as casual staff after they repented and being paid monthly with an allowance of like N100,000 but unfortunately one of them was arrested recently for collaborating with some other people to commit crime,” a source told SaharaReporters.
In the state’s Ingawa Local Government Area, the Katsina State Police Command recently apprehended three’repentant’ criminals for robbery and cattle rustling.
On August 11, 2021, at Dammarke woodland in Ingawa, the trio allegedly attacked a herdsman, Alhaji Gide Suleiman, according to the command’s spokesman, Gambo Isah.
He claimed the men robbed him of 20 cows for N7.5 million.
The defendants are also accused of stealing N40,000 from the victim as well as four mobile phones.
The suspects, he claimed, were among the “repentant” bandits now cooperating with the state administration.
They were apprehended by Nemesis on August 24, 2021, after they reportedly attacked the victim again. When the cops apprehended them, they were planning to rustle another group of cows from him.
Two cows and N444,000 were recovered as exhibits, according to Isah.
Early in January, SaharaReporters revealed how the governor of adjacent Zamfara state, Bello Muhammad Matawalle, gave roughly 15 brand new Hilux cars to leaders of various repentant’ banditry groups.
The governor also sanctioned the payment of millions of naira in compensation to the repentant criminals.
“Those bandits have different groups, so if they say they repent, the governor will give them a Hilux vehicle; unfortunately they are now using the vehicles to carry out attacks,” a military source had told SaharaReporters.
“It’s so sad, he called it a peace and reconciliation programme, but all you need to be rich now in Zamfara is to take up arms against the people.”
The State Commissioner for Justice, Nura Ibrahim Zarumi, stated that the news humiliated the administration, but she refused to refute the tale’s veracity.
Alhaji Abubakar Maradun, the former Chairman of Zamfara State’s Maradun Local Government Area, stated that three new Hilux vans obtained from the government aided a recent attack on a community in the state.
The bandits, who assaulted the community in their hundreds, were met with fierce opposition by the inhabitants, causing them to leave and abandon one of the trucks, which contained three rifles and other ammo, according to Maradun.
