BREAKING: Banditry: Popular Islamic Cleric, Gumi invited for interrogation amid calls for his arrest

The Federal Government of Nigeria has revealed that Kaduna based popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has been invited by security agents for interrogation over his remarks on banditry activities in the North.

Gumi, a controversial Islamic scholar and a self acclaimed negotiator who would always indicate interest to negotiate each time bandits abduct their victims was invited on Monday, according the Minister of Information and Orientation.

The Minister of Information and Orientation, Mohammed Idris disclosed this while speaking with journalists at the State House, Abuja.

Specifically, Gumi has been against the use of forceful means in dealing with bandits and terrorists while attempting to release abductees, adding that Government should listen to bandits’ concerns and provide them with a better living conditions.

Gumi argued that government’s approach in dealing with bandits and terrorists turned them into monsters, which they became uncontrollable.

He said: “These bandits are getting more vicious. Before they were not doing this. They are heading to softer targets and we can only attribute this to the kinetic approach.

“Now we are fighting bandits. They are anonymous. You cannot fight someone you don’t even know. We said let’s go in, let us know them, let’s map them out – know who they are and where they belong.

“All this intelligence information is virtually not there.

“The high-handed approach to the matter is what is making it worse. Now they are kidnapping children and threatening death, which they were not doing before.

“So, I think what to do is really go back to the drawing board and be truly non-kinetic.”

On how to halt the trend, he said the government should design a programme like the amnesty initiative for the Niger Delta militants.

“You need a programme just like the Niger Delta, a programme which will bring them out of their forests, educating then, giving them healthcare, giving them peaceful life. This is how you entice people to abandon violence and militancy.

“But when you continue dropping bombs, they will find no sympathy and empathy for our children. This is it. An eye for an eye. This is what is happening. So, we have to change our tactics, we have to change our styles,” Gumi added.

We know leaders of bandits

“The government, everybody knows their leader. In fact, there is a book, ‘I am a Bandit’, by one Murtala, an academic. He listed more than 160 bandit leaders. We know their leaders by their names but you don’t know their foot soldiers.

“You don’t know all of them. So, you just know their leaders. If you don’t know their foot soldiers, how can you be fighting? They can just come into the town as civilians and then go out,” he said.