The federal administration has made it known that Ahmad Gumi, an Islamic preacher residing in Kaduna, has been summoned for questioning concerning his remarks about the conduct of armed militias in the country.
This announcement was made by Mohammed Idris, Minister of Information and Orientation, during his address to journalists at the State House in Abuja on Monday.
The controversial religious leader had previously taken issue with the Federal Government’s reliance on forceful or kinetic methods to ensure the liberation of kidnapping victims.
According to Gumi, the government must engage with the bandits firsthand, analyzing their conditions in order to offer improved living standards.
In his view, the government’s adoption of forceful measures has effectively transformed the bandits into formidable adversaries.
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.
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“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.”
To address the situation, he suggested that the government should devise a program modeled after the amnesty initiative implemented 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.
“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.
He stated that one doesn’t know all of them, so one only knows their leaders. He questioned how one could be fighting if they don’t know their foot soldiers, expressing concern that they could simply enter the town as civilians and then leave unnoticed.