Former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani, has said that terrorists and bandits operating in Nigeria’s North-East and North-West are not foreigners but originate from the region itself.
Sani made the remarks during a public discussion on insecurity, stressing that the North must take the lead in resolving the crisis. He called on Northern leaders to take direct responsibility for addressing the security challenges in their region.
According to Sani, claims that terrorists and bandits hail from Mali, Malawi, or other African countries are misleading.
“The terrorists killing people in the North-East are not from Congo, Malawi, Libya, or Egypt; they are northerners, and they are Muslims. We must be honest about this,” he said.
He added that the situation in the North-West mirrors the same pattern.
“The bandits in the North-West are not from Senegal, Mali, Morocco, Guinea, or Guinea-Bissau; they are Fulani from the North-West of Nigeria,” he stated.
Sani argued that the region must stop externalising the problem and confront it internally.
“It is for us to solve this problem, not anybody else. They are not speaking Chinese or Spanish. They speak Fulani, Hausa, and Kanuri. These are our languages,” he said.
Regarding the scale of the threat, the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain in Kaduna noted that the number of active terrorists and bandits is smaller than often assumed.
“The total number of bandits and terrorists is not more than 5,000,” he posited.
Sani urged Northern leaders to determine when they will confront the issue directly and to craft a regional security response grounded in accurate intelligence about the groups involved.