A former local government chairman, a district head, and a member of the State House of Assembly have all been arrested in relation to banditry in the state, according to Muhammad Dalijan, the commissioner of Zamfara State Police.
This was revealed by Dalijan during his meeting with Thomas Parker, the chief of the Counterterrorism Unit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in the command centre in Gusau, the state capital.
The CP asked the UN to assist in setting up a forensic laboratory in the state, but they withheld the names of those accountable.
He claimed that the lab will deal with the difficulty of travelling to Lagos in order to perform forensic analysis.
In order “to accelerate the investigation and prosecution of suspected criminals,” Dalijan urged Parker to do in Zamfara what they had done in Maiduguri: ask the UN for help in establishing forensic laboratories, training personnel, and conducting investigations.
Parker responded by saying that they were in Zamfara State in response to Governor Dauda Lawal’s request for assistance from the UN in addressing the insecurity in the region.
Parker told the police of the UN’s preparedness to perform an evaluation of the security situation, first to understand the causes and problems, and then to help deal with the dangers. Parker visited the police command to get additional information about the existential threats in the state.
