Posted by Chinenye on Thu 07th May, 2026 - tori.ng
Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina State has defended allowing some rural communities to engage in dialogue with armed groups in an effort to reduce ongoing insecurity in the state.
(Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina state. photo by Thisdaylive)
In an attempt to bring peace back to some areas of the state, Katsina State Governor Dikko Radda has expressed his position on permitting certain communities to have conversations with B@ndits.
In an interview with Channels Television, he stated that the decision was influenced by the direct appeals from impacted residents as well as the reality on the ground.
"Who wants to fight as long as it will yield the desired outcome?" He described how certain villages conveyed the problem to him and recalled their need for help:
"Your excellence, we have met with these people and they are ready to lay their arms and we have suffered so much, we are not getting what we want from security agencies in terms of giving us protection.
Allow us to negotiate with these people if we can find peace," the communities said to me when the difficulty became too great. I told them to go ahead, but I wouldn't be involved.
He explained that some towns have experienced peace for more than a year as a result of these interactions:
"So they went ahead, and as of right now, there are these communities that went over negotiation with those b@ndit, and there has been no attention in those places for more than a year."
"I allowed them because that is what they want and I'm here as a governor based on their wish and they have given me mandate so who am I to say I don't like what they want to do," he continued, defending his support for the procedure.
He pointed out that since then, many of the affected communities have seen some degree of calm, enabling locals to resume farming and other daily activities without worrying about attacks.