It’s Not Late To Negotiate With Bandits, Give Them Promising Future — Ex-Minister, Shittu

President Bola Tinubu has been urged by a former Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu to negotiate with bandits.

According to him, the Federal Government should use non-kinetic approach in dealing with the menacing phenomenon of banditry in Nigeria.

Shittu, an ex-minister in the cabinet of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, stated this on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.

“If I am in position, it is not too late to use non-kinetic neasures in negotiating with bandits, giving them a promising future. Let us retain them. Many of them are very intelligent, many of them are able-bodied,” Shittu said, adding that the military spending on equipment far outweighed the non-kinetic approach.

The ex-minister said the millions of out-of-school children in Northen Nigeria is a “production factory for banditry” in the country.

Like Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, Shittu opined that the government should negotiate with bandits “for the purpose of resettling, rehabilitating and retraining them”.