By; Sunday Ode, Abuja.
Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai on Thursday met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja behind closed-doors over the lingering communal clashes in southern part of the state.
The governor, after the meeting that lasted for about two hours, told State House correspondents that he had received the President’s nod to bring the perpetrators of the recurrent crisis to justice by all means.
Southern Kaduna zone has been enmeshed in ethnic crisis since last week, following which the state government on Wednesday announced the imposition of a 24-hour curfew in three local governments in the area.
He said: “I came to brief the President about the situation in Southern Kaduna, what happened in the last few days and outlined to him the measures we have been taking as state government with the support of the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Police and the Department of State Security.
“The President has given us unquantified support to stabilize the state and bring all those responsible for the violation of our laws to justice. So, we have the full support of the President to move on and we are quiet confident that things will return to normal very soon”.
Governor el-Rufai also insisted that the dusk to dawn curfew imposed on the areas affected by the crisis would continue regardless of the end of year festivities.
According to him, critics of the curfew should direct their anger to the people who precipitated the crisis rather than the state government that was only taking measures to ensure the protection of lives and property in the state.
“Well, we have curfew even on Christmas day but it is for twelve hours. People will be able to get out in the morning at 6am and be back at 6pm, it is because of the security situation.
“I don’t think the state government should be blamed, those responsible for the violence that broke out in those parts of the state should be held responsible for that. We have not imposed curfew in other parts of the state, we had to impose curfew here because of the situation that was caused by irresponsible behaviour by certain people,” the governor emphasized.
