Popular Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has said the escalation in bandit attacks in the North, is an indication that something has terribly gone wrong.
Gumi who spoke at a recent retreat on inclusive security organized by the Global Peace Foundation and Vision Africa in Abuja, said the bandits he once knew, are different from the monsters now terrorizing the North.
He said the sudden change in strategy by bandits, where they now kill their victims unlike in the past, is due to government’s refusal to consider peaceful engagement with the group as a viable option.
Gumi had advocated for a peaceful approach toward ending banditry in the country, much like how the late Yar'Adua government resolved the Niger-Delta militant issue.
President of the Foundation for Peace and Non-Violence in Nigeria, and hero of the Niger Delta Amnesty programme, Mr. Onengiya Erekosuma, lauded Gumi's efforts, saying results of amnesty granted to Niger Delta militants by the late Yar'adua government, has shown that amnesty works, and believes Gumi is doing the right thing by pursuing a non-violent solution to the security problems in the northern part of the country.
"Is military confrontation the best solution? If we count our losses, we would know that something is very wrong with our approach and there is the need to change our approach. You see why I have to commend Dr. Sheik Abubakar Gumi and his likes for their persistent efforts and call to use the nonviolence approach rather than military confrontation in handling the present case of insecurity.
"The idea of my friend and brother, Dr. Gumi, is about telling the world that the nonviolence approach can and will end insecurity in the North and any other part of the country, only if our people will get to see and understand the gain in what Gumi has stated," Erekosuma told New Telegraph.
But there seem to be more against Gumi's push for a non-violent approach toward addressing banditry in the country, than those for him, leading the Buhari government to declare bandits as a terror group having been initially reluctant to do so.
Following the proscription of the group, things seem to have gotten worse, prompting Gumi who repeatedly warned against proscribing the group as 'terrorists', to feel justified.
“We all know that bandits initially don’t kill people. They only kidnap people to get money, but something has metamorphosed and turned them into a Frankenstein monster that kills people just for the pleasure of it,” Gumi said in his speech.
Although Gumi recently dissociated himself with bandits, saying he's no longer interested in exposing himself to danger when almost everyone including the Buhari government has turned against him, he did however, called on the federal government to meet with bandits urgently before they become uncontrollable.