By Richard Elesho
The Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje has narrated what his government is doing to keep the State safe and peaceful, even as he has warned about the invasion of Falgore Forest by a criminal element. He also urged the Federal Government to complement the efforts of the State.
The governor spoke to State House correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday. He described the current security challenges in the country as unfortunate.
He said, “First of all, I came to see Mr. President and brief him on the security situation in Kano.
“There are challenges all over the country that are unfortunate, but we believe Mr. President is doing his best with other stakeholders in order to curtail the situation.
“We need the helping hands of almost everybody, especially governors and chairmen of local governments. We have observed that the security situation now, our forests are the major problems because they accommodate bandits, they accommodate terrorists, they accommodate armed robbers and they accommodate those who are criminals.
“In Kano State, we have taken some measures. We have two large forests the Falgore forest, which is bordering Kano, Kaduna and Bauchi and also not far away from Plateau. In that forest, we established a military training ground in conjunction with the Army. And there’s a lot of military training going on in that forest using the facilities that we have provided.
“So, that is helping to checkmate the activities of bandits in that forest and I have requested Mr President to also establish another institution within that forest and that forest will be liberated completely.
“Also, we have introduced technology within the forest, from the office of the DSS in Kano and the Office of the Commissioner of Police and even from my office, we are able to monitor what is happening in that forest. And there’s effective communication between the DSS and the police and those who are managing the forest; the checkpoints and various places that security agencies are manning.
“Also community policing, we are making it a very important agenda. The traditional rulers right from the Ulamas, district heads, village heads, ward heads, Imams and major stakeholders; we are holding regular meetings and the security agencies get a lot of information from the local people that is helping Kano State a lot.
“Also in Kano metropolitan where we have eight mega local governments, we are establishing some technology. In particular, we’re improving the network system within metropolitan Kano. We’re laying over 100 kilometres of optic fibre within Kano metropolitan. So that CCTV cameras will be more effective. So that we can manage the whole megacity in terms of security and also in terms of improvement of the network.
“We have also constituted what we call an enlarged Security Committee. Because limiting it to the Air Force, Army, Police, DSS Civil Defence, I think the security network in terms of the flow of information, requires much more than that.
“So we are including Customs, Immigration, Correctional homes, those involved in Human Trafficking Prevention of Human trafficking, NAFDAC, even the NDLEA, because of drugs, even the Federal Road Safety Corps, even our own local traffic managers, Karota, the Vigilante group, all these we put them into one committee where we hold meetings and exchange information and they constitute subcommittees that relate with community policing and through that, we have a lot of information and that is helping the system to be effective and efficient.
“Also, we introduced technology. As earlier mentioned, we have the most powerful tracker in the country. Through that one, even some people who escaped to Niger Republic, Cameroon, we’ve been able to trace them and connect with international security agencies for their arrest. So, Kano is the most or one of the most peaceful states in the federation, because of this multi-faceted approach that we have adopted in order to secure the state and we shall continue to do that,” he said