Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says President Muhammadu Buhari and his predecessor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, paid ransoms to kidnappers.
President Buhari has spoken publicly against ransom payment, warning governors against encouraging bandits and kidnappers through negotiation.
But ex-president Obasanjo, who spoke when he hosted members of Tiv professionals Group (TPG) at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Wednesday, said the administration of both Jonathan and Buhari negotiated with kidnappers, though they deny doing so.
“Government has always paid ransom. Not only this government, even during Jonathan (administration). They paid ransom, but they deny it,” he said.
Neither Jonathan nor Buhari has responded to Obasanjo’s claim.
The former president however, asked the government to develop a means to deal with kidnappers and bandits as against ransom payment.
The former President equally insisted that fighting insecurity to a standstill required a “carrot and stick” approach.
“Some people are still reaching out, and hoping that lives can still be saved. But a situation whereby anybody thinks paying ransom is the way out, that person is folly. He is a folly. This is because when you pay ransom, you encourage. But if you are not going to pay ransom, you must have the means to deal heavily with it. You must have the stick to deal with it,” he said.
Obasanjo was instrumental to the release of the 27 students abducted from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna State.
