“Nigeria May Soon Suffer Afghanistan’s Fate”, Gumi Warns FG

“Nigeria May Soon Suffer Afghanistan’s Fate”, Gumi Warns FG.

Islamic cleric, Sheik Gumi has said that Nigeria may soon suffer the same fate as Afghanistan if the military fails to stop its ‘cruelty’ against the bandits.

Sheikh Gumi tells Federal Government to engage bandits if they truly want schools to be secured.

He said the government’s onslaught against the bandits via the military across the nation would not yield results.

Gumi spoke on Facebook on Monday in a statement he titled ‘Zamfara: The flaring crisis’.

He advised the Federal Government to handle the matter with the knowledge used in handling the militants and EndSARS protesters.

According to Gumi,“Federal Government should grant amnesty to bandits in the North, just the way the administration of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua did to the Niger Delta militants before his demise, adding that the disposition of the government towards the bandits would worsen things”.

“Any more action will push them closer to religious fanaticism. It gives them protection from discrediting them as thieves and also reinforces their mobilisation of gullible young unemployed youth as we saw with Boko Haram”.

“These measures I enumerated are cheaper, easier, and lasting than the kinetic approach which is now taking place. No military, especially of a poor economy, can win guerrilla warfare. The recent victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan is a factual warning for those that contemplate this.”

On agitators, Gumi stated that the Federal Government should engage them in dialogue rather than using force against them.

He said, “With their acquisition of weapons, they realised how easy it became to be masters of their abode; the forest, where no authority can venture into. This has emboldened them to further attack people for more ransoms to sustain their newfound reality.

“Now, with the prodding of the government to take more military actions of an already ugly situation whereby they were left to amass weapons, a huge military budget that is almost draining the economy to a standstill in the purchase of fighter aircrafts and conducting military operations in the region have become to the authorities, in their calculations, a necessity.

“Unfortunately, this is no solution or wisdom. When you don’t have the monopoly of the instruments of violence, then dialogue has the monopoly of resolving the conflict.

“This is what the UN is all about; roundtable resolution of conflicts. What we are seeing is more than just criminals and criminality. Yes, it may have started as such but like any conflict, it is dynamic