Kidnappers are cowards, they must be treated as terrorists – Tinubu

• This even as he said that kidnapping must not be handled with levity, saying that persons involved in heinous crimes such as kidnapping must be treated as terrorists.

President Bola Tinubu says armed non-state actors have been degraded and decimated and are now only going after vulnerable persons and soft targets.

This even as he said that kidnapping must not be handled with levity, saying that persons involved in heinous crimes such as kidnapping must be treated as terrorists.

The President spoke on Tuesday at a Ramadan dinner with members of the Federal judiciary led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola.

He reaffirmed the government’s resolve to tackle insecurity head-on, adding that those who resorted to kidnapping children are cowards, incapable of confronting the might of the Nigerian Armed Forces.

”We must treat kidnappers as terrorists,” the President said, according to a statement by his spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale.

“They are cowardly. They have been degraded. They look for soft targets. They go to schools and kidnap children and cause disaffection. We must treat them equally as terrorists in order to get rid of them, and I promise you we will get rid of them,” the President said at the dinner attended by serving and retired judicial officers, including two former CJNs, Justice Mahmud Mohammed and Justice Walter Onnoghen.

Nigeria has been plagued with existential security crisis for years on end as the country grapples with terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and oil theft.

The North-West and North-East geopolitical zones have been the worst hit regions by insecurity as they have become the hotbed of insurgent and bandit attacks in the last decade, with terror gangs wreaking havoc in the zones, killing and kidnapping thousands of residents, travellers, and soft targets including women and children.

The Tinubu government has maintained that it won’t negotiate with bandits, even as the marauders turn kidnapping-for-ransom to a thriving business model, abducting hundreds of schoolchildren and residents, with the most recent mass abduction being that of 137 schoolchildren from Kuriga in Kaduna State.