Kaduna 2½ times bigger than five South-East states – El-Rufai

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said on Thursday the state was two-and-a-half times bigger than all the five states in the South-East.

The governor, who stated this at the inaugural edition of the Fountain Summit organised by the Ekiti State government in Ado-Ekiti, expressed fear that the Boko Haram insurgents would relocate to the North-West.

He called for the cooperation of Nigerians in the fight against insecurity in the country.

The governor said: “We have security challenges, but our investors know where their assets are and they know that those assets are safe and we’ve never seen the headlines of security affecting our inflow of investments.
“But we must work on improving security or more than that, we must stop this ‘us versus them’ mentality and collaborate more closely.

“Remember once upon a time, Boko Haram was only in North-East. Now, the biggest fear we have in the North-West is that they are relocating to the region because they are being chased out from the North-East by ISWAP.

“When they are chased out of the North-West, where do you think they will come? Somewhere else. It is something we should all be concerned about; not only federal and state collaboration but also across the country.

READ ALSO: Kaduna to boost GDP by 50% in 2023 – El-Rufai

“Don’t see what is happening in Kaduna and say it is not my problem. It will be your problem one day, unless it is solved.

“There is a major difference between security in headlines and security in facts. Kaduna State has 46,000 square kilometres of land.

“I joke with my South-East governor friends that the whole of five states of the South-East can fit into Kaduna State, two-and-a-half times.

“This is the size of the state. We are smaller than Niger and Borno States. To cover that kind of area with 11,000 policemen is almost impossible.

“So there are many ungovernable spaces in our state. But you see, when an incident occurs in one part of the state, remotely connected with what is happening in Kaduna or Zaria or in the metropolitan centres, people think the entire Kaduna State is unsafe.

“It is not true. Kaduna is not Lagos. One local government area in Kaduna — Birnin Gwari local government area — is three times the size of Lagos State. So, when something happens in Ikeja, it doesn’t mean that Epe is affected. It is the same thing, but even larger in Kaduna State.”

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