The Inspector-General of Police, (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, on Thursday confirmed that Police alongside other security agencies and state governors had been in dialogue with bandits in the northeast to restore peace to the region.
Adamu briefed State House correspondents at the end of security chiefs’ meeting with the President at the State House.
He pointed out that dialogue and negotiations were used by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to solve the militancy problem in the Niger Delta that resulted to the amnesty programme for the repented militants.
He said that the use of kinetic action sometimes does not solve a problem rather a negotiation and dialogue brings peace.
He said, “We just finished security meeting and we have noticed within this quarter that the security situation in the country is stable, we make a comparison of what has happened in the previous quarters and this quarter and we saw that there is tremendous decrease in the kidnapping, banditry, armed robbery and even acts of cultism.
“And you can see the situation in Northwest, banditry has reduced tremendously, kidnapping also has gone down and we have statistics to back it.
“And having noticed that, we have been charged by Mr. President to do more. He wants to see a near-zero crime society in the whole of the country. So we have been charged to do more than what we are doing now in fact, in the whole of the country.
“Recently, there have been series of peace initiatives especially the Tiv/Jukun crisis, the federal government came up with initiatives by bringing the leadership of the two states and their traditional rulers and we have been asked to support that initiative and see to it that dialogue succeeds and that there is peace between the Jukun and Tivs.
“We have also been charged to increase security along the pipelines to make sure that crude oil theft is stopped completely because the loss that the country is facing in that area is not tolerated. So we have been charged to increase our security activities in that direction to make sure that crude oil theft is stopped completely.”
