The President stressed his administration’s commitment to combatting banditry and kidnapping on Wednesday when he received in audience a delegation of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere at the State House in Abuja.
President Bola Tinubu has declared that those who threaten the sovereignty of Nigeria will pay a heavy price.
The President stressed his administration’s commitment to combatting banditry and kidnapping on Wednesday when he received in audience a delegation of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere at the State House in Abuja.
He highlighted the progress made so far in safeguarding Nigerian territory and sovereignty, noting a significant decline in the threat posed by terrorism, according to the Voice of Nigeria.
He said the government has “degraded terrorism to a level that they could not threaten the sovereignty of this country any longer”.
Tinubu said, “What we face now are the challenges of terrorism and security of lives and property.
“There is a need for development and good results and we have been battling. I can tell you that we are achieving success.”
“It is always hard to defeat economic opportunities that are open up in this type of challenge particularly when the country is equally challenged economically so the banditry kidnapping that they have resulted into will also be defeated,” he said.
Insisting that his administration did not pay any ransom to secure the release of school children abducted from Kuriga school and others, Tinubu said, “I declined any ransom, no payment of ransom whatsoever, we are taking the battle to them and we are getting results more rapidly than ever before, the case of Kuriga and others is evident in the way we rescue from Sokoto to Katsina to Kaduna and other now more expeditiously than ever before.
“We are working hard on intelligent gathering and more on execution of our programs, those that think can threaten the sovereignty of this country will have themselves to blame, they have the price to pay and we are not going to relent.”
He said solid minerals were attracting banditry but assured that his administration would tackle the problem through effective forest guards.
“Solid minerals that are attracting a lot of insecurities, scavenging and others, we have special forces that are facing that now, we will have effective forest guards that will be fully in control of our forest in the country,” he said.