2023: Bandits Are Our People, Vote Leaders Who Won’t Fight Them – Sheikh Gumi

With less than 2 months to the 2023 general elections, popular Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has told his congregation to vote for those who will not fight bandits if elected into office.

In a sermon, the controversial Islamic cleric urged Nigerians to vote for leaders who would negotiate with bandits when elected into office.

Describing bandits as “our people,” Gumi said Nigeria’s next set of leaders should negotiate and give bandits what they want for peace to reign.

“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.

Bandits have been ravaging some Northern States like Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, and Taraba.
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They have abducted and killed some persons while collecting ransom worth millions of naira.

Gumi is a prominent, yet controversial, Muslim cleric acting as a self-appointed middleman between bandits and the government. Gumi is the eldest son to late Shaykh Abubakar Gumi. He was born in Kano state. He came from a geneanalogy of islamic scholars with his father being the first Grand Khadi of the old Northern Region.

Before now Sheik Gumi, who rose to the rank of a captain as a doctor in the medical corps of the Nigerian Army, had accused Christians in the military’s counter-insurgency/banditry campaign of being responsible for the killing of bandits. It was a remark with the potential, if not the clear aim, to set off a sectarian war in the military. For quite a while, indeed, Sheik Gumi had come under sharp criticisms from Nigerians who view his mediatory role of appeasement as overtly conciliatory and accommodating of the outlaw activities of the terrorists.

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