Masari: Assassins, not bandits, killed my commissioner

Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State on Tuesday in Abuja updated President Muhammadu Buhari on socio-economic and security developments in the state.
Masari, who spoke to State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, stressed the need for states in the North-West to renew their efforts through collaboration to address the security challenges in the zone.
He said “I think what is most important for us to succeed in fighting these bandits is for all of us, the States, especially the North-western 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 (bandits) 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 one of his commissioners, the governor dismissed media report that he was killed by bandits, saying the incident was purely an assassination case.
“The incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry attack it was purely an assassination by unknown killers, which the police and other security agencies are working round the clock to unravel.
“My commissioner was killed by unknown assassins and not a single pin was stolen in his house, you could see that this was a pure crime that has to be fully investigated for us to know the root causes and why,” he said.
According to the governor, the state is recording progress in the ongoing fight against bandits’ activities and other criminals.
“I think if we are talking about banditry, certainly we have seen some improvement; we cannot say normalcy has returned but there is 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 per cent 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,” he said.