Ahmad Sani Yerima, a former governor of Zamfara State, said that those who engage in banditry do so out of a combination of illiteracy and poverty.
This follows his prior remarks urging the Federal Government to negotiate with bandits in an effort to end the kidnappings, murders, and incursions that plague some areas of the North.
On Friday, Senator Yerima appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today, claimed that a good education would have prevented them from carrying out the evil deed 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.
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