Mercenaries: Governor El-Rufai and Prof. Yusuf Usman

“El-Rufai knows he does not have the power to hire foreign mercenaries”. This was the comment of Prof Yusuf Usman, an elder statesman in the country, in an interview with channels television on Monday, 4th April 2022. The professor also reiterated that the Kaduna State governor asserted the existence of security issues in his state, […]

“El-Rufai knows he does not have the power to hire foreign mercenaries”. This was the comment of Prof Yusuf Usman, an elder statesman in the country, in an interview with channels television on Monday, 4th April 2022. The professor also reiterated that the Kaduna State governor asserted the existence of security issues in his state, while he never does anything about it. He added that Governor Nasir El-Rufai is too clever and good at what he does, which is noise. This is called political grandstanding.

In respect of the above claims by Prof. Yusuf, one needs to critically analyse and ask this question – Is el Rufai using political grandstanding in the style of his leadership? Let us analyse the below statements by the governor:

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Recall that the governor in an interview with Arise TV said that forests in northern Nigeria should be carpet-bombed to end banditry in the region. He further added, “I have always believed that you know, we should carpet-bomb the forests; we can replant the trees later.”

Meanwhile, in another part of the battlefield, the governor was reported to have threatened to bring in foreign mercenaries to fight terrorists hibernating in the forest areas around Kaduna State if the federal government fails to tackle insecurity in the same interview with Arise TV. 

In the same vein, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has maintained that outbursts by Governor el Rufai, and the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, were clear confirmations that some leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) know the whereabouts of the terrorists but failed to act, just as the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Kaduna also criticised the governor over the continuous kidnapping and killing of citizens by terrorists.

In contrast, John Njoku, a former associate editor of New Nigerian Newspaper, argued that the Kaduna State governor works harder to curb insecurity than any other state of the federation, pointing at the creation of a Ministry of Security and Home Affairs, which has managed to coordinate the state government’s interface with federal security forces deployed to the state.

In conclusion, the Kaduna State conundrum is confounding as bandits and kidnappers are ravaging the state. What happened recently in the state (train attack) indicates that there is an increase in the level of threats we are facing. In 2020, the Kaduna State Annual Security Report revealed that bandits killed 937 persons and kidnapped 1,972 others in the state while in 2021, 3,348 were kidnapped. These reports are shocking, increasing, and alarming. 

Abdulazeez Alhassan, the President of Universal Writers and Authors, writes from Rigasa, Kaduna State