Former U.S Army officer, Captain Bish Johnson (retd.) says there is foreign support for banditry in Nigeria.
Johnson, who spoke during an interview with Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Monday, however, said some of the sponsors may not necessarily be Nigerians.
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“I also believe that there are some foreign sponsors of this banditry that we see in the country where they kidnap and abduct people just to divert our attention to the abduction while they are abusing, illicitly mining our mineral resources in connivance with highly placed individuals in Nigeria.”
“Some of whom may be in the government, some retired, and some top-level government officials,” he said.
The former officer maintained that most of the security problems were syndicated operations that involved so many components, people, and elements all working together for the same purposes, which are commercial.
Johnson said that banditry, kidnapping had become a commercialised enterprise where people made a lot of fortune over the misfortune of others.
“Nigerians have always had this impression that the insecurity in the country is some kind of complicity from within the government. I have always insisted and maintained that most of the insecurity is syndicated operations that involve so many components, people, and so many elements, all of them working together for the same purposes, which are commercial reasons.
“Banditry, kidnapping has become a commercialized enterprise where people are making a lot of fortunes over the misfortune of others. Some of you are fueled by the unregulated and illicit mining of our mineral resources in the far North, and also fueled by the vulnerabilities in our borders around that sector between Niger, Chad, and northern Cameroon” he added.
He further said information or any allegation about some kind of connivance or complicity from anyone in Nigeria should be a matter of serious concern and should be thoroughly investigated.
However, we should not dismiss such accusations on the basis that it is just a terrorist that is talking or maybe that they are talking under compulsion.
Source: Channels TV
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