A former Governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa, on Monday, decried the country’s worsening insecurity, noting that the problem has plunged the North-West into a deep calamity.

Bafarawa, who stated this in a chat with the BBC Hausa Service in Kaduna, stressed that farmers are always the targets of bandits in the region.

He said all those telling President Muhammadu Buhari that all is well with the security situation in the country are cheating him and the people of the North-West.

The ex-governor said: “This insecurity is a catastrophe that has befallen us. The situation in Sokoto and Zamfara States can only be described by those who have been there.

“The sad thing is that we all know that the security of the nation is in the hands of the Federal Government. Those people telling President Muhammadu Buhari that everything is ok, or are they telling him things are not ok? If they are telling him things are going on fine, they have cheated him and cheated us too.

Allah knows that we are in a serious calamity in our zone. Today, I traveled home and came back, I am an eyewitness, not that somebody told me. Our people are harvesting millet in abundance, we have gotten millet and rice, but people cannot convey the farm produce home. Whoever went to the farm to convey the crops home, will not come back alive.

Whoever goes to bring his rice back home, will not return alive. Furthermore, people are in a form of incarceration like in Zamfara. A debilitating catastrophe, a situation that phones cannot work, markets are shut and there is no palliative for the poor to cushion the effect, to get food to eat.

“My call here is that we should put politics aside. This is a situation that affects me, it affects the President and he is the one that will be answerable to Allah.

“Allah will ask him questions, he (the President) should constitute a special team to visit Barafawa and Shinkafi on a fact-finding mission. Or they should go to the villages around Shinkafi, or Sabon Birni or Goronyo. All these places in the senatorial zone are in deep calamity.”