Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, in this interview with Daily Sun's Kenneth Udeh admits that Niger State’s major challenges are bandits and coping with Coronavirus infections.

Five years since he was elected in 2015, governor Bello said a lot still needs to be done in the state, just as he outlined major achievements that his administration and it''s positive impact on the wellbeing of the people.Excerpt:

Lately, Niger State was in the news over the activities of bandits in the state. Is this not going to affect farming and the food chain in the state?

Well, in the last one year, we have had two challenges, one is banditry. I am very disturbed about banditry. My worry is that it appears that the activities of the bandits would stop farmers from going to their farms, and if farmers don’t go to farms, there is a looming danger of outbreak of famine. So, we have been fighting bandits for one year, we are making progress; unfortunately, this is a war that has to be fought jointly with neighbouring states, because the bandits operate from neighbouring states. They have made life very uncomfortable for our people over here. On several occasions we have to take care of IDPs, that is quite a lot of resources which we don’t have. It has cost us a lot of money that we should use for other areas, instead it is used to address security challenges. Addressing insecurity is extremely expensive, to finance security operations, considering the size of the state. We find ourselves moving from one part of the state to the other on a daily basis and that requires a lot of resources, from movement of equipment and personnel. Also, you have to provide allowances for the personnel because most of the times they are in the forest and a lot of logistics are needed. So, it requires a lot of money which ordinarily we would have used in education, infrastructure, water and so on. So that has been giving us a lot of sleepless nights. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic that came in suddenly also made life extremely difficult because we have to divert again substantial parts of our resources towards addressing issues on COVID-19. So far, the main challenges we have are banditry activities and the Coronavirus pandemic. Every other thing with time will take place. People have to be patient. I know there a lot of things that still need to be done in education, roads, water resources, agriculture and so on, but we have to prioritize and as at the moment our priority is security and Coronavirus pandemic. Going forward, we need to pay a lot of attention to agriculture, especially youth empowerment. We are trying to engage a lot of our youths into agriculture, we have many graduates seeking for jobs, unfortunately, the size of the government is already too big, the alternative is to encourage our youths to embark on agriculture or anything that has to do with skills. We have to work closely with our youths to understand that even though you have a degree there is the need to engage them more and see how government can support them. We are ready to support them if only we can understand how they need our support. In some cases, we had cause to train the youths and provide them with what we call starter packs. We trained them in tailoring and so many things. So, I hope now since this COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of everything in Nigeria at the moment and this is a very good opportunity to bounce back from being a consumer nation to a productive nation and also increase our skills capacity.

Forget your degree and get skills as skills is the key and you will do well. Agriculture is very good, people make a lot of money out of Agriculture, but of course, government has to set up the enabling environment to support the youths because even clearing of farm is an issue to them. So, government will work with the ministry of youths to see how it can support this effort.

Read more https://www.sunnewsonline.com/banditry-giving-me-sleepless-nights-gov-bello/

THE worse is yet to come. By then, most states with armed miscreants who are also grossly uneducated and frustrated by their poverty stricken lives will make your states ungovernable.

Your people want power to remain in North in 2023. Anything to discredit this current government is a bae to them

Your sleepless nights might have just begun

Present.


Booked

But the unaccountable security votes, that runs into millions of Naira you enjoy every month as the chief security officer of the state doesn't give you sleepless nights abi ?

I refused to be shocked !

If I hear say you get any sleepless night.....Just be deceiving yourself there.

Use your security votes for security

God punish you and Buhari and every Governor who doesn't think the security of the masses should be the first priority.

Audio Sleepless Nights

Lies from pit of hell!

Not true