Ahmad Gumi, Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, has said the use of excessive force by Nigerian security agencies has aggravated banditry and other criminality in the country.
He said banditry may not end if excessive use of force on bandits continue.
Gumi stated this on his verified Facebook account in a write-up he entitled: ‘Banditry: on a fast track to ideological terrorism.’
The popular cleric said like Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Igboho, and Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), bandits see themselves as freedom fighters.
“I also found the excessive use of force at a particular period of fighting the booming industry of cattle rustling that involved innocent herders as one of the causative factors that has influenced this ugly negative metamorphosis,” he wrote.
“The more the force, the more the change. This explains why the Birnin-Gwari axis of Kaduna, Niger and Zamfara states that witnessed a near genocide of nomadic Fulani has the greatest number of conscripts into banditry. Let us not forget, Nomadic Fulani are all over the west African region.
“Now with the insistence that only force can annihilate these ‘criminals’ who, by the way, see themselves as freedom fighters (cf. Kanu and Igboho), the herdsmen who were nurtured by nature to face extreme weather challenges, harsh forest, and rural conditions, wildlife and austere lifestyle, are finding the toxic extreme ideological terrorist groups as attractive.
“They give them a sense of belonging to an ‘international struggle’ and a religious smokescreen to justify their heinous crimes of killing innocent people and extorting them. They are there, ready prey to be influenced either the good way or the evil way, it depends on who recognizes their internal struggle and aligns with them. From hence I see the folly of our intellectuals, governments, and society.
“As the evil is already permeating into them and the forces are pushing them on a fast track to ideological terrorism! At least we should learn from Boko Haram, twelve years on, that brute force is never the solution. Who started the extra-judicial killings does matter. Are we ready to say sorry and pay compensations? Or is the genie already out of the lamp?
“Very few politicians today do see themselves different from the bandits, as they conjoin to fight to the death on a nation drifting, heading to tribal and ethnic cleansing or superiority. Their vision has, and is always myopic – my tribe, my people, or my power.
“This is the same banditry I saw in the forests. Both are mercilessly taking from the meager resources of the populace for what their egoism dictates. No universal education for all. No health for all. No food for all. These are prerequisites of human dignity and the rights of all citizens, not a favour.”
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