Kaduna Commissioner says bandits, terrorists killed 1,837 people in 18 months

The Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, has disclosed that no fewer than 1,837 persons were killed by bandits and terrorists in the state in the last 18 months.

Aruwan who made this revelation while presenting an address at a public presentation of reports on the ‘Southern Kaduna Pilot Peace Project on Inter-religious Harmony’ on Friday in Kaduna, said a total of 1,192 persons were killed in 2021 while 645 persons have been killed between January and June 2022.

At the event which was organised by the Gideon and Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation and the British High Commission, Aruwan stated that though the state government had done a lot in the fight against insurgency and insecurity in the state, rural banditry in the North-West was still a menace.

“The Kaduna State Government is acutely aware of the devastating impact that conflict and violence have had on communities. In 2021, 1,192 people lost their lives in Kaduna State due to banditry, terrorism, communal clashes, violent attacks and reprisals; 406 of these lives were lost in the Southern Kaduna general area, mostly through killings and counter-killings.

“In the first six months of 2022, 645 people lost their lives in such circumstances across the state; 234 of these occurred in the Southern Kaduna area.

Read also: Suspected bandits abduct two Catholic priests in Kaduna

“Besides the loss of life and limb, there are the grim socio-economic effects of violence, eroding the viability of affected communities. Food insecurity is a close reality in frontline areas where farmers are threatened and attacked by bandits.

“Besides the rural banditry confronting most states in the Northwest, another layer to the general insecurity is violence stemming from a lack of recourse to the law in some mixed communities.”

Aruwan appealed for an extension of the operations of the Multinational Joint Task Force to cover international borders spanning the North-West and North-Central parts of the country from their existing operations in the international borders around the North-East.

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