Students’ Kidnapping: We are ready to tackle bandits in southwest, says VGN

The National Public Relations Officer of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Nureni Olanrewaju Adedoyin have said that all measures have been put in place in order to tackle the bandits who are planning to invade schools in the southwestern states of Nigeria, should the government ready to support them.

National Trumpet gathered that some yet-to-be-identify bandits are planning to attack some schools in the southwest to kidnap students.

Adedoyin while speaking with National Trumpet this afternoon said their personnel are ready for the attack, saying they are fully prepared, only that the government is not ready to give them maximum support.

In his words, he said “If you look at the current situation of security in Nigeria, you will see that it is very alarming. It is at the peak that we all need to put our hands on deck. It is not an easy thing to secure our nation at the moment of time where insurgents and bandits are ravaging a country.

“If we look at what happened in Niger state yesterday, some bandits invaded Laven Local government area of the state. Our personnel were able to repel the attack, though we lost three of our men during the attack but thank God we were able to achieve success, and the bandits were not able to operate in that local government.

“If we look at the situation of security in all the schools that we have, because that is the current trend, bandits invading schools to kidnap students. I’ve been saying it, even in the southwest, we’ve not been experiencing that much, we will see that there are alarms everywhere that bandits are panning to invade our schools in some states of the southwest like Ogun, Lagos, Oyo states and the rest.

“I’ve said it before in one of my recent interviews that immediately they graduated from kidnapping and taking ransom from various individuals, they go at large to schools where they can get large number of people to kidnap and they will be able to have large number of ransom. They use all these ransom to buy highly sophisticated weapons. That is why it is not encouraging to pay ransom to bandits.

“Security agents should be able to look for a way to get bandits arrested and get victims released without any harm.

“We are preparing for them, in Vigilante Group of Nigeria, we are putting measures in place to be able to block their operations, not only in southwest but across the country to make sure our schools are safe again.

“We don’t want what is happening in Katsina, Niger and Zamfara state to happen here in the Southwest too. We need government attention in VGN. There is need for our bill to be assented to by the President.

“There is also need by the federal government to get us all the things we need to carry out our intelligence gathering as well as operation so as to be able to repel attack by bandits and insurgence.

While speaking on how they source for funds in carrying out their operations, VGN spokesperson said “We’ve not been given any support from government quarters. Some state governors like Kano, Jigawa, Gombe, Sokoto and some states in the north are supporting us, but that has never happened in the southwest.

“We are appealing to governors in the southwest to also emulate their colleagues in the north by giving stipends to VGN in their various states, as this will also equip us. We can do it, we have the machineries to attack bandits.”