Controversial Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi has again lashed out at the Federal Government over the continued use of force or kinetic means to secure the release of victims of kidnapping, especially the 287 pupils and teachers recently abducted from a school in Kaduna state.
Speaking on an Arise Television show monitored Thursday in Abuja, Gumi said the government ought to go closer to the bandits and study them to provide them with better living conditions.
According to him, the government’s use of force has now turned the bandits into monsters.
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”.
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On how to halt the trend, he said 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.
“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”.
Speaking on the same station the following day, a lawyer, Daniel Bwala lauded President Bola Tinubu’s decision disallowing the payment of ransom, saying the 15-day ultimatum issued by the bandits for payment of the N1 billion ransom was enough to decimate them.
He said; “I agree with President Tinubu because he must have been briefed based on intelligence that the individuals behind this ransom thing are white collar people. So, continuing to discuss and giving of ransom is freeing off of this crisis economy thereby financing them and building that economy to be stronger than our oil and gas industry.
“They said they are giving 15 days ultimatum for the payment of ransom but honestly, 15 days are enough to decimate all of them”.
Bwala also advised the president to evolve homegrown solutions in tackling the menace.