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Sheik Gumi challenges Nigerian military to provide evidence of killing Bandit Kingpins
Renowned Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has challenged the Nigerian military to convince the public by providing evidence of claims of killing two bandits’ kingpins and their followers in Zamfara forest using NAF jets.
Gumi’s reaction was coming on the heels of celebration of the military’s announcement of the acclaimed onslaught by some Nigerians, saying, “The simple question is that we should ask ourselves from these reports that they are saying that they’ve bombarded this camp and that camp, is there any evidence on the ground? There is a particular forest we visited in Niger State. The whole of the settlement had been bombarded. This settlement has nothing to do with bandits. In fact, they showed us two wells full of innocent people, dead, casualties of these bombardments.
“That’s exactly what these bandits were telling us. They said whenever we hear the sound of an aircraft, we run to our caves. If they will succeed in killing anybody, it is the small children, the wives or the cows. That’s their own testimony. So you can imagine a country where, for example, bandits would gather in a forest and be celebrating. You don’t even have the intelligence to track them and eliminate them. Then you to say you will succeed in killing them.
“I hear them yesterday celebrating the reported death of bandit leader. So, for example, if you kill one bandit leader and another one emerges, what benefit did you derive?
“For example, you killed Dogo Gide, a
person more dreaded than him emerged. When they killed Buharin Daji, Turji emerged. So what’s the success there? And for us to even be celebrating. There is nothing to celebrate, the only thing we can celebrate is that if our military succeeds in crushing them all and they cannot”.
Gumi who spoke with newsmen through his media consultant, Tukur Mamu, in Kaduna on Tuesday also said that if America could go to Afghanistan, spend 20 years, 3 trillion dollars and wasted 3,600 personnel, over 20,000 citizens but are now dialoguing with the Taliban, then nothing less should be expected of Nigeria?
According to Gum, “These (Americans) are people that have so much transparency even in their military spending. You will not hear even the cases of corruption like the one we hear in Nigeria. So if they would do that after all these 20 years, what do you expect from Nigeria? I can tell you without any fear of contradiction, Buhari would spend the next one year seven months without addressing this issue. And if the next president comes and he will follow the same process, he cannot succeed.
“You have to address so many economic issues and so many issues of injustice. And then for you to pursue the path of dialogue. It is not a sign of weakness. That’s what Yar’Adua initiated in Niger Delta. Do you think the silence we used to hear now from Niger Delta is because of guns? Is it because of military might? There are many top militant commanders that have been on the payroll of the Federal Government for the past eight years. They are the richest now, top militants and commanders but this is a silent issue that nobody knows. That is the reason why you can explore oil and then exploit it. The only reason why their own is different is because the Federal Government knows that if they didn’t do something there, it will affect the whole economy. That’s the issue”.
He also noted that the issue of security has no religious connotation as it affected everybody and something that is really consuming the society, asserting that major problem of Nigeria as a nation is how to go about solving this crisis that has defied all solutions so far.