By Ishaya Ibrahim
Controversial Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi has advocated for negotiation with the bandits that killed over 200 people on Christmas Day in Plateau State and other criminals running amok, killing Nigerians for no cause.
Gumi who has held several meetings with notorious bandits in the past, told Trust TV in an interview that it was a waste of time spending billions of naira to combat the bandits in a war that couldn’t be won.
According to Gumi, the only way to secure the country was for the government to engage in an open discussion with the terrorists.
He said: “All the money we spend on buying all these Second World War aeroplanes and artillery and jets to fight insurgency is an archaic way of dealing with this issue. And billions of naira are spent on that.
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“Negotiate with these people. Build for them schools and hospitals. Let them have future. Build for them markets. Even the people we call bandits, what they sometimes complain is that they no longer have cattle markets because whenever they establish market, it gets destroyed.
“So the military should be out of this picture completely. We are not fighting a foreign country. We should develop our internal security.”