President Muhammadu Buhari has on Friday said bandits, secessionists and arsonists should now expect fire for fire from the federal government as it adopts a tougher stance against insecurity across the country.
The President also said those who are hell bent on destroying his administration would not go scot free.
The Nigeria leader spoke during an exclusive interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), which was monitored by ANLNews.
The President said the bandits terrorising the North and other parts of the country would also not be spared or be given preferential treatment.
“I mean more than fire for fire; we will arrest them.
“What I hope is to arrest them, try them and give them very bad publicity and then jail them, so that people will know that if you misbehave, you won’t get away with it,” he said.
“How can you go to police station, kill the police (if they are there), loot the armoury and burn the place? What do you want to achieve? Go and open prison and allow criminals that have been tried through the legal system and let them loose on the society, and then how can the Government sit and allow this confusion to be perpetrated? No government can allow confusion.”
The President dismissed the allegation that he was protecting bandits in the North by not threatening them the way he has been threatening those from other parts of the country.
His words: “They are been unfair. They should go and ask the governors of Sokoto, Katsina, Zamfara and find out how we have been deploying the police, military to deal with the bandits. We are not sparing anybody. Nigeria is vast, and there are a lot of forests.”
Buhari asked critics to be fair to his administration in assessing its performance.
Buhari said: “They should reflect seriously on the time we came in, especially in relation to the North East and the South South… where we are now. How much were we producing and how much was the past administration producing?
“When we came, somehow the militants in the South were unleashed on this administration. So I will like Nigerians to reflect on those in terms of resources and time.”