The Minister of Police Affairs, Maigari Dingyadi, has stated that the federal government is still open to welcoming repentant bandit terrorists.
Tracknews Online reports that security agents have ramped up offensive against bandits in the northwest.
With the ongoing onslaught witnessing major successes, Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara had stated that the window for receiving repentant terrorists have closed.
But speaking to Channels Television on Tuesday evening, Dingyadi stated that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is still open to receiving bandits who are ready to surrender.
According to the minister, repentant bandits are Nigerian citizens and the Federal Government has a responsibility to reintegrate them “peacefully and honourably into the society”.
He said security agents will continue to record major successes against bandits.
The minister revealed that the Nigerian military are now working more on the precision of their intelligence and the sophistication of their equipment to achieve greater victory against terrorists.
Asked if the government is still open to granting amnesty to the bandits, Dingyadi said, “When you talk of amnesty, it is a relative term and what the Federal Government is trying to say is that: Let us see those who have surrendered their arms, let us listen to them, let us chronicle them, let us receive them, we cannot just throw these people away because they are all Nigerians.
“Of course, they are criminals, they have committed atrocities, they have committed crimes, but according to the international laws, when you surrender from a war zone, you are not killed, you are not maimed, you are allowed to have your say. We are listening to them to see how we can integrate them into the larger society.
“What we are trying to do is to get them settled in their various communities, to let them have a kind of means of livelihood so that they can integrate peacefully and honourably into the society.”
The minister insisted that the federal government is ready to help and resettle any bandit willing to surrender and do it honourably and honestly.
He said: “As a nation we have responsibilities to our citizens, to integrate them with the little that we can afford to give them and we will continue to monitor what they are doing in their various communities to ensure that they don’t go back to their old days of armed banditry and all of them.”
