Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State has revealed that there was a plan to attack and kill the bandits who abducted the students of the Federal College of Forestry and Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna State.
He said that just before the planned attack, the bandits changed location, resulting in the students spending an extended period of time in captivity.
The Governor made the disclosure during a webinar organised by the Africa Leadership Group on Thursday. He said that when the students were abducted, he had a plan to attack and kill the bandits even if it meant some students would have died in the process.
He added the death of any student would only be considered a collateral damage, a price he was willing to pay in place of paying any ransom.
According to El Rufai, “Two days after the abduction of the Afaka young people, I was assured by the airforce and the army that they knew where the kidnappers were with the students and they had encircled them.
“We were going to attack them. We would lose a few students but we would kill all the bandits and we would recover some of the students. This was our plan. That was the plan of the airforce and the army… But they slipped through the cordon of the army. That is why they were not attacked.
“We know it is risky, we know in the process we may lose some of the abductees but it is a price we have to pay. This is war, there will always be collateral damage in war and we will rather do that than pay money because paying money has not solved the problem anywhere in the world.”
The Governor admitted that he had “lost weight” and was having sleepless nights over the insecurity in his state.
He pointed out that the situation was however, not as bad as katsina, Niger and Zamfara but the media chose to focus on Kaduna State because it feeds their narratives of ethnic clashes.
In Niger and Kaduna States according to him, entire villages have been sacked but that is not the case in Kaduna.
El Rufai added that he hopes that by 2023, the next president of Nigeria will not be more than 65 years old.
He added that political leadership is mentally and physically draining so a younger person would easily handle the stress better than an old person.
According to him, President Muhammadu Buhari being a nice guy, doesn’t like to sack people while he believes in sacking incompetent hands, a situation that earned more achievements.
In his words, “I fire people so I get higher execution rates. President Buhari is a nice guy, he doesn’t fire people so he has a slower execution rate.”
Read also:
27 Abducted Students of the School of Forestry and Mechanisation Freed
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