President Muhammadu Buhari, on Tuesday at the presidential villa, Abuja, met separately with four northern state governors to address the insecurity stifling the region.
Present at the meeting were Governors Aminu Masari (Katsina State), Abdulahi Sule (Nasarawa State) and Darius Ishaku (Taraba State) who all requested for assistance to end the insecurity situation they are facing in their states.
Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, had on Monday night met the president on the same issue.
After the meeting, Masari stressed the need for northern states to collaborate to tackle the security challenges in the northwest.
Masari, who led a delegation of elders from Katsina to the closed-door meeting with the president, said: “I think what is most important for us to succeed in fighting these bandits is for all of us in the states, especially the northwestern states to take the pains and work together to make sure that we block all the loopholes.
“But if one state has a policy and another has a different one, certainly they (terrorists) will always be moving from one state to another. Luckily enough, we are already working closely with states that border us, like Nasarawa and Niger, to bring the problem to a manageable and tolerable level.”
On the recent killing of the state commissioner of science and technology, Rabe Nasir, by assassins, Governor Masari said the incident had nothing to do with banditry.
According to him, it was purely a case of assassination.
He assured the family of the deceased and the state that security agents are working hard to unravel the cause of the murder.
Masari added: “The incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry. It was purely an assassination by unknown killers, which the Police and other security agencies are working round the clock to unravel what happened.
“Because my commissioner was killed by unknown assassins and not a single pin was stolen in his house. So, you could see that this was a pure crime that has to be fully investigated for us to know the root causes and why.”
While noting that the measures put in place by security agencies have brought an improvement in the security situation in Katsina, Masari further said: “I think if we are talking about banditry, certainly, we have seen some improvement; we cannot say normalcy has returned but there is an improvement.
“When we had a comparative analysis before the issuance of the security containment order, what we saw in three months when we compared, was a drastic drop of over 100 percent in terms of the rate of kidnappings, killings and their associated crimes with banditry.
“So, the incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry.”
Also speaking, Governor Sule told reporters that he met the president to express his appreciation for the support being received by his state over security.
He said: “I came to express appreciation to Mr President for all the supports we have continued to receive in the area of security.
“You must have heard, there were several joint operations of the special forces; the military, the police, together with vigilante, the Air Force and the Navy in the two local government areas bordering Abuja and as a result, the various operations have been very successful.
“Recently, some of our schools were being targeted, we privately approached and actions were taken and then we thank almighty God that we’ve been able to dislodge those ones.”
On the Boko Haram insurgents that had gathered in parts of the state, he said they have now been dispersed.
“Those are the ones I have mentioned that mostly they had been dislodged because of the joint operations, even from the support we get from my colleague in Kogi State. So, constantly, we share information with Kogi State as well as Benue and a lot of efforts have been put into that and so far, so good,” he said.
However, he affirmed that despite the effort that has been put in, Nasarawa State is not free from insecurity.
“Well, nowhere in the world is completely safe, but to a certain extent, we can say we are. If you compare us with so many parts of the country, you can consider Nasarawa as a very safe place today,” Governor Sule declared.