Popular Islamic scholar Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has urged his congregation to support candidates who will not fight bandits if elected to office with less than two months till the general elections of 2023.
What Gumi preached to his congregation: In a controversial lecture, the Islamic cleric advised Nigerians to choose candidates who, if elected, would negotiate with bandits.
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Gumi referred to bandits as “our people,” saying that for peace to rule in Nigeria, the country’s future leaders must engage in negotiations and grant the bandits their demands.
What he said: “Don’t vote for those who will fight bandits. The fighters (bandits) are our people. So please vote for those who, after attaining power, will call and negotiate with our people (bandits) so as to give them what they want for peace to reign,” he said.
States impacted by banditry: Northern states including Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, and Taraba have been wracked by bandits.
They have kidnapped and murdered a number of people while demanding millions of naira in ransom.
Sheikh Gumi is a well-known but divisive Muslim cleric who serves as a self-appointed go-between for criminals and the government. The late Shaykh Abubakar Gumi’s oldest son is Gumi. He was a Kano State native. His father, the first Grand Khadi of the former Northern Region, comes from a line of Islamic intellectuals.
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Sheik Gumi, a doctor who attained the rank of captain in the Nigerian Army’s medical corps, had previously charged Christians with killing bandits during the military’s counterinsurgency/banditry operation. It was a comment that had the possibility, if not the explicit intention, of starting a sectarian conflict in the military. Sheik Gumi had in fact faced harsh criticism from Nigerians for a long time, who saw his appeasement role as overtly conciliatory and tolerant of the terrorists’ illegal operations.
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