"Kidnapping has become a lucrative business in the North West part of Nigeria"-Shehu Sani

Senator Shehu Sani has stated that North Eastern Nigeria would be a safe place if the government spent a fraction of the time spent on fighting self determination agitations on bandits. 

Sani stated that Kaduna 'is under siege' by bandits and criminal elements and that because banditry and kidnapping have become very lucrative, stopping it now will be very hard.

Speaking to SunNewsOnline, Sani said;

"Kaduna is a state under siege; armed bandits have taken over most parts of the state, they are impoverishing our people by forcing them to sell their homes, land and other property in order to pay ransom to get their loved ones freed. "

"They have destroyed our agricultural system in the sense that farmers can no longer go to their farms. Our educational system has been disrupted because of the activities of these bandits. They have become more daring and audacious that in some places, they go about collecting taxes. They have become a state within a state; that is the sad situation we found ourselves in."

"Kidnapping has become a lucrative business in the North West part of Nigeria whereby they have become an authority onto themselves. In our own state Kaduna, hardly a day goes by without reported cases of kidnapping. In fact, the ones that are reported are when the numbers are much not when they are three or four."