Just In: Ganduje Replies Kwankwaso on Plan to Engage Bandits
- Former APC national chairman Abdullahi Ganduje publicly challenged Rabiu Kwankwaso's call for Nigeria's NDC to negotiate with bandits
- Ganduje questioned how armed bandits could realistically sit down with local officials and traditional rulers to talk peace
- Ganduje's comments on Kwankwaso's position revived a long-running political rivalry between the two former Kano governors
Abdullahi Ganduje, the former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has pushed back against a proposal by the leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement and 2027 vice presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Rabiu Kwankwaso, for Nigeria to open negotiations with bandits terrorising communities in the north-west.
Kwankwaso had recently suggested that engaging armed groups through structured dialogue, involving the NDC, could offer a path toward reducing the violence that has claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands of residents across states like Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto.
Source: Twitter
Ganduje questions the logic of bandit talks
Ganduje dismissed the idea as unworkable, arguing that the nature of banditry makes formal dialogue impossible to execute in any credible sense. He remarks:
"How do you expect bandits to come from the forest? Hundreds of them, each one with a gun, coming to sit down with local chiefs, the chairman of the local government, traditional rulers, even with the police, and start negotiating," Ganduje said. "I think that system has failed."
His remarks drew attention not only for their directness but also because of the history between the two men. Ganduje and Kwankwaso are former political allies who later became fierce rivals in Kano state politics, with each leading opposing camps that have clashed repeatedly over governorship and federal elections in the state. Their fallout produced one of the most bitter political rivalries in northern Nigeria.
A deeper disagreement on security strategy
The exchange reflects a broader disagreement over how the federal and state governments should handle the banditry crisis in the north-west, where criminal gangs have carried out mass abductions, attacks on farming communities, and raids on military convoys.
Kwankwaso's camp believes engaging these groups could reduce bloodshed where military force alone has not delivered lasting results. Ganduje's position, however, is that previous attempts at negotiation have produced nothing durable, and that granting armed groups a seat at the table alongside government officials and traditional institutions only emboldens them.
The public dispute between the two political figures adds another dimension to an already complex security debate, with voices from different ends of Nigeria's political spectrum offering conflicting prescriptions for a crisis that has resisted easy solutions.
Source: Legit.ng
