9th November, 2021
Former governor of Sokoto state, Attahiru Bafarawa, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to leave the comfort of Aso Rock and visit the North West zone devastated by banditry and terrorism.
“This catastrophic situation that we found ourselves in the country, the President should come out of the Villa, put on uniform and form a committee including me to visit Zamfara for an on the spot assessment”, Bafarawa told the BBC Hausa Service on Monday.
Bafarawa described the North west, especially Zamfara and some parts of Sokoto as an area of ‘deep calamity”.
And he volunteered to show Buhari places that the criminality in the zone had destroyed.
Bafarawa, known for blunt talking, challenged President Buhari to be more proactive in tackling insecurity
“This insecurity is a catastrophe that has befallen us. The situation in Sokoto and Zamfara states can only be described by those who have been there.”
“The sad thing is that we all know that the security of the nation is in the hands of the Federal Government.
“Those people telling President Muhammadu Buhari that everything is ok, or are they telling him things are not ok? If they are telling him things are going on fine, they have cheated him and have cheated us too.”
“Allah knows that we are in a serious calamity in our zone.
“Today, I travelled home and came back, I am an eyewitness, not that somebody told me. Our people are harvesting millet in abundance, we’ve gotten millet and rice, but people cannot convey the farm produce home. Whoever went to the farm to convey the crops home, will not come back alive.”
“Whoever goes to bring his rice back home, will not return alive. Furthermore, people are in a form of incarceration, like in Zamfara.
” A debilitating catastrophe, a situation that phones cannot work, markets are shut and there is no palliative for the poor to cushion the effect, to get food to eat.”
When the interviewer said his view could be influenced by politics, he replied:
“My call here is that we should put politics aside. This is a situation that affects me, it affects the President and he is the one that will be answerable to Allah.”
“Allah will ask him questions, he the President) should constitute a special team to visit Barafawa and Shinkafi on a fact finding mission. Or they should go to the villages around Shinkafi, or Sabon Birni or Goronyo. All these places in the senatorial zone are in deep calamity.”