After his meeting with bandits in Zamfara State, Sheikh Gumi has urged the Federal Government to grant amnesty to repentant ones among them.
He stressing that not doing so could lead to serious bloodshed.
Sheikh Gumi, who spoke with journalists at the Government House in Gusau, the state capital, on Thursday, said if the Federal Government and state governments where the bandits operate from keep engaging security agencies to attack the bandits, the killings and criminality will not end soon.
Referring to the amnesty granted to Niger Delta militants and the creation of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs to address the effects of the militancy in the region by the late President Musa Yar’Adua, Sheikh Gumi said such action would curb the incidence of banditry in the northern parts of the country and help quench tensions in the region.
“Negotiations remain the best option for conflict resolution. Negotiations settled the grievances of the militants in the South-South, so President Buhari should borrow from that ideology to end terror attacks in his own government,” Sheikh Gumi said.
According to the Islamic cleric, “almost all the heinous crimes in Nigeria are being perpetrated by unemployed youths who have no defined means of livelihood for a number of years and you know that a hungry man is an angry man.”
On his visit to the bandits in their hideouts, Sheikh Gumi said they opened up to him on their grievances with the government which they said had not been addressed by the state government.
He added that the unrepentant bandits demanded justice in dealing with the Fulani people, saying that both the security agencies and the outlawed Yansakai members had classified the Fulani people as third-class citizens in a country that belongs to everybody.
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“They lamented that mere seeing any Fulani herdsman with a car or motorcycle has become a serious crime against the security agencies and the Yansakai members as they would seize the car or motorcycle from the Fulani herdsmen, describing them as bandits or kidnappers.
“They also said that during their meetings with the state government on peace accord and reconciliation, all the promises that were made by the state government did not reach the Fulani herdsmen as the kind gestures were being hijacked by the middle men between them and the state government.
“I will call on the Zamfara State government to, as a matter of urgency, ensure a judicious distribution of any thing that belongs to the Fulani people in the state as hijacking their rights will aggravate the already existing tension in the state.
“There is nowhere that peace can reign without justice and if there is justice, the federal and state governments would not have been wasting huge amount of money to quell banditry in the state,” Sheikh Gumi added.
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