Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina state has said that the Commissioner of Science and Technology, Dr Rabe Nasir, who was killed at his residence in the state capital last Wednesday, was murdered by assassins and not bandits. 

Calling on North-West states to collaborate to address security challenges in the region, Masari who led a delegation of elders from Katsina into a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, assured the family of the deceased and citizens of the State that security agents are working hard to arrest those who carried out the act.

He said; 

“The incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry attack. It was purely an assassination by unknown killers, which the Police and other security agencies are working round the clock to unravel what happened.

“My commissioner was killed by an unknown assassin and not a single pin was stolen in his house. So, you can see that this was a pure crime that has to be fully investigated for us to know the root causes and why.

“When we had a comparative analysis before the issuance of the security containment order, what we saw in three months when we compared, was a drastic drop of over 100 per cent in terms of the rate of kidnappings, killings and their associated crimes with banditry. So, the incident we had last week had nothing to do with banditry.”

Stressing the need for collaboration among States in the Northwest, Masari added; 

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“I think what is most important for us to succeed in fighting these bandits is for all of us the States, especially the North-western States, to take the pains and work together to make sure that we block all the loopholes.

“But if one State has a policy and another has a different one, certainly they (Bandits) will always be moving from one State to another.

“Luckily enough, we are already working closely with States that border us, like Nasarawa and Niger, to bring the problem to a manageable and tolerable level.”

He also claimed that there has been considerable improvement in Katsina state security because of the measures put in place by security agencies.

Masari said; 

“I think if we are talking about banditry, certainly we have seen some improvement; we cannot say normalcy has returned but there is an improvement.”