By ThePreview Team

 

Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, has reiterated his call for a non-kinetic approach to ending banditry in Nigeria’s North-west and North-central regions.

Mr Gumi, who made the call in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday, argued that military operations alone are insufficient to address the crisis.

He called for the systematic deployment of credible Islamic scholars to engage armed groups hiding in forests across the region.

“Since 2021—now almost six years since we began preaching to bandits—one cannot help but imagine what could have been achieved if many credible Islamic scholars had been systematically deployed to engage bandits across the North-west, teaching them the sanctity of human life, the inviolability of people’s property, and the Islamic prohibition of killing and oppression,” Mr Gumi said.

The cleric said such engagements would reduce the need for military operations and address what he described as the root causes of the crisis.

“Very few people seem to understand that many of these bandits are themselves products of the same ignorance, deprivation, and social neglect that have allowed the crisis to flourish,” he said.

“People are the victims of their own prejudice!”

Peace missions to bandits’ camps

Mr Gumi has made several self-funded and state-supported peace missions to bandits’ camps since early 2021.

In February 2021, following the abduction of students from Government Science College, Kagara in Niger State, he trekked into the Dutsen Magaji forest where he met heavily armed young men bearing AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

At the camps, Mr Gumi mounted makeshift preaching points, telling the armed men that injustice suffered by herders did not justify attacks on innocent people.

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“In Islam, there is no justification at all for reprisal attacks, killings, kidnappings, and rape,” he told them at the time, urging them to embrace formal Islamic education, observe daily prayers and lay down their arms.

Amnesty model

Mr Gumi also advocated a federal rehabilitation programme similar to the Presidential Amnesty Programme implemented for Niger Delta militants.

He said offering amnesty, providing schools and basic healthcare, and integrating repentant pastoralists into security roles such as forest guards would be more effective than airstrikes in ending banditry.

The cleric’s position has drawn criticism from those who argue that negotiating with criminal groups legitimises terrorism.

But Mr Gumi maintained that ignoring the socio-economic and educational deficits pushing young men into forests will only prolong the conflict.