Gumi is urging the government against heeding the advice of the senate and some governors who want the bandits to be designated terrorists
Controversial Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, has kicked against any plan to declare bandits’ terrorists.
Nigerians have been demanding that the bandits be officially designated a terrorist organization like Boko Haram.
The Senate has made a case for the bandits to be declared as a terrorist group. Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State also asked President Muhammadu Buhari to declare the bandits as terrorists.
But Gumi thinks differently. In a statement, Gumi said the moment bandits are termed terrorists, foreign Jihadist movements will set in force and many teaming unemployed youths may find the cause palatable and attractive.
Gumi said: “The acts the Bandits are committing now in NW have gradually over time become tantamount to terrorism because wherever innocent people are fatal victims it’s pure terrorism.
“Yet, innocence these days is relative. We agreed if their children and women are also killed, they are guilty by association or collateral damage, so also the bandits may think the same way.
“It’s right for vigilantes to lynch Fulanis herdsmen or anyone that looks like them by profiling but wrong for the herdsmen to ransack villages in retribution.
“They are pushed to believe it is an existential war and in war, ethics are thrown to the winds.
Gumi added that: “the only helpful part that is against Bandits is that no other than them are attracted to join them in the NW because of its ethnic tinge and colouration.”
He added: “The acts the Bandits are committing now in NW have gradually over time become tantamount to terrorism because wherever innocent people are fatal victims it’s pure terrorism.”
Gumi argued that the psychology in fighting natives is to induce a motive for their struggle if they don’t have one already, a motive that is manageable.