The National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity) has asked the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government to be serious in prosecuting terror suspects if it hopes to win the war against terror.

The association while reacting to the recent reported attack on a military facility in Mutumji, Dansadau Local Government Area of Zamfara State, said the attack coming few weeks after the one on the Nigeria Defence Academy, Kaduna was embarrassing.

The NAS Capoon, Mr Abiola Owoaje, in statement: “Federal Government must rethink its war on terrorism,” warned against continued pampering of terror suspects and treating banditry as a lesser crime than those committed by Boko Haram insurgents.

According to Owoaje, terrorism and all kinds of atrocious crimes have blossom under the present administration because the government has been trivializing terrorism and pampering criminal elements, thereby allowing the culture of impunity to reign.

Owoaje faulted the deradicalization policy of the Federal Government for not being transparent and called for the immediate trial of all terror suspects to demonstrate the federal government’s sincerity to tackle terrorism.

He said: “It is incongruous that a country ranked third in the Global Index of Terrorism is seemingly unable to interdict the sponsors of terror and negotiating with these criminal elements, and even unconstitutionally granting pardons to self-confessed murderers and ‘reintegrating’ them back into the society through a non-transparent deradicalization policy.

“President Buhari as the Commander-in-Chief leading the security agencies must do more to convince Nigerians on the sincerity of his government’s fight against terrorism. We reiterate that the government should rethink its strategies to combat terror by ceasing all manner of negotiations with criminal elements in the northeast and northwest. The recent disclosures by Governors Matawalle and Masari on the failed negotiation with bandits show that from the onset, negotiating with bandits was a self-defeatist strategy,” he said.

Owoaje further called for the screening and immediate trial of the hundreds of terror suspects in various detention centres, adding also that the 400 Bureau De Change (BDC) operators, that the office of the Attorney-General, Mr Abubakar Malami announced in May 2021 of being implicated as sponsors and financers of terrorism should be immediately put on trial.

“Finally, and for the umpteenth time, we demand that the federal government and our security agencies get serious with intelligence gathering to weed out internal collaborators, identify sponsors of terror, cut off their sources of funding, supplies and punish severely those found guilty. Nigerians are tired of the excuses; President Buhari should act now before terrorists overrun his government and our country,” he added.

(THISDAY)

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