The President Bola Tinubu-led Nigerian government says it has invited Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, over his comments on the activities of bandits in the country.
The Minister of Information and Orientation, Mohammed Idris, disclosed this while addressing journalists at the State House, Abuja, on Monday.
Idris said Gumi was not above the law, noting that the government had deemed it necessary to invite him for questioning.
SaharaReporters reported on March 21 how Gumi noted that the Niger-Delta region was relatively peaceful after the Nigerian government granted amnesty to militants, adding that the same method must be applied to bandits currently ravaging the country.
Gumi had noted that the Nigerian military had been hard on bandits with the approach it used to win the war against banditry in the northern part of the country.
Speaking on Daily Trust’s X Space conversation titled, “When will there be an end to Nigeria’s recurring abductions?”, he had noted that both the Army and Air Force troops launched ground and air strikes that killed the bandits’ families – wives and children – which have angered them, as they see it as a war.
He had said, “To them (military) they are fighting a war. Honestly, the military has been very hard on them, the Air Force is killing their families.
Insisting on socio-economic methods, the scholar said, “When you think of synergy, you can’t rule out the military, but there has to be synergy. Let the non-kinetic approach be in the front. When it fails, then the kinetic can come in.
“And in fact, it will come in a better position because the non-kinetic approach will give access to have a better intelligence, better knowledge and with that kind of intensive engagement in negotiation.”
Gumi, who has visited bandits in the forests a number of times, to negotiate the release of victims, gave a similar occurrence of how former President Musa Yar’Adua gave amnesty to the oil-rich Niger-Delta militants which stopped the kidnapping of expatriates.
The scholar said as militants destroyed oil pipelines then, the bandits are also doing the same preventing farmers from working on the farm causing food insecurity, as well as abducting innocent children and women for ransom.