A former Governor of Zamfara State, Ahmad Sani Yerima, has revealed what spurs those involved in acts of banditry to do so.
Yerima said the prevalence of banditry was not unconnected to widespread poverty and lack of education.
Yerima made this known during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday.
Senator Yerima insisted that proper education would have dissuaded them from engaging in the diabolical act in the first place.
“No educated person, Christian Muslim, Jew or Hindu who is in his right state of mind and has something to do and does not have a poverty problem that will take up arms and kill an innocent person.”
“The major problem facing these people is poverty and ignorance,” Yerima said when quizzed about the reason for the growing case of banditry.
Speaking further, the former Deputy Minority Leader of the Senate also claimed that the previous governments had failed to address the plights of the bandits
“In the past various state government have not taken care of them, and the cattle routes and forest reserves left for them have been taken over by farmers,” he said.
Yerima’s statement is coming on the heels of call by some persons asking the Federal Government to negotiate with bandits as a way of eradicating the abduction, killings and incursions plaguing parts of the North.