Katsina State Governor, Dr. Dikko Radda has charged coalition opposition leaders to announce their plans for fuel subsidy and how they intend to govern the country.
He also said that about 90% of bandits terrorising the state are neither strangers nor outsiders.
Featuring in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, the governor questioned the opposition leaders on what they plan to do differently from what President Bola Tinubu’s government is currently doing.
He said: ‘This coalition we are talking about in Nigeria, what is new about it? Who are these people in the coalition? Have they not been in another coalition before? What are they going to come and do differently from what is happening in the country now?
‘Those who want to contest for President under the ADC (African Democratic Congress), let them come and tell Nigerians: Are they going to bring subsidy back? And if they are not going to bring subsidy back let them tell Nigerian how they are going to run the government and with what resources are they going to run the government’.
Radda urged the opposition leaders not to deceive Nigerians, saying that all of them had formed a coalition because they were out of government.
‘Let’s be realistic, let’s tell ourselves the truth. The time to deceive Nigerians is over. Who (among them) was not in the government of the last regime? We know the track records of everyone; we know what they have done when they were in government, and they are now crying and shouting because they are outside the government.
‘Let’s be realistic, if you’re coming with something new, every Nigerian is going to embrace it because all of us are here to make Nigeria better. Our problem is we the politicians and we must clean ourselves and be sincere to ourselves’, he said.
The coalition opposition, which is floated on the platform of ADC, and spearheaded by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, include former presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi; former Senate President David Mark; former Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and many former governors and lawmakers.
Radda said that insecurity remains a major obstacle to meaningful development in his state, complaining that, while governors serve as security chiefs in their states, the Army and Police operate independently.
The governor said that, to bolster security efforts, the state created a local outfit composed of youths drawn from areas affected by banditry.
The governor further said: ‘These boys know the terrain better, they know those people better.
‘Most of the perpetrators of these banditry are from our own area. They are not aliens. Ninety-something percent of them, we know their fathers, their grandfathers, and they are living with us’.
He restated the importance of involving locals in the fight against banditry.
Radda added: ‘So this situation requires local involvement, and that was why we created this outfit, so that people at the local level can provide us with information.
‘They can lead the fight to the enclaves of the bandits because they know the terrain better, and they can fish out informants living among us, giving information to the bandits and those that provide logistic support to the bandits.
‘Without unbundling that, you would not be able to fight insecurity successfully’.
