I never said security agents were dodging bandits, Sultan of Sokoto disproves

The Sultan of Sokoto State and co-chairman of the Nigeria Inter-religious Council, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has refuted the claim that he said security agents were dodging bandits and mocking victims of the attacks.

The Sultan, who is also the President of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, denied the claim in a statement made on his behalf by the NIREC’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua, on Tuesday.

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The Sultan spoke at a second quarterly meeting of NIREC, with the theme ‘Media and Effective Nation Building’ held in Abuja on Thursday.

At the event, he stressed the resurging cases of attacks in different states in the country after the general elections, which he described as very alarming.

“Throughout the campaigns and the elections, we never had these cases of insecurity. Suddenly, after the elections, the killings continued across Niger, Plateau, Kaduna and other places.

“These killings are definitely not related to religion, but the activities of some set of uninformed people.

“Imagine a situation where bandits would invade a community, kill people and destroy their properties, with little or no resistance from the security officials, only for the security officials to appear long after the attacks and perhaps, to mock the people or look at the ashes of destroyed items,” the reverted monarch added.

However, Sultan maintained that he did not say, ‘Security Agents Dodging Bandits, Mocking Victims.’

“The theme of the meeting was ‘Media and Effective Leadership for Nation-Building

“Some of the messages were misrepresented by some reporters.

“What he said was, ‘When bandits go into people’s communities and kill them and burn their houses and whatever, nothing is done.

“After the deed has been done, the security agents will now go there, to do what? To look at the ashes that have been burnt?” Omonokhua said.

Quadri Olaitan