If Nigerian leaders are not very careful in their approach to end banditry the perpetrators can be lured by the Boko Haram terrorists and that will be very disastrous for the country, Kaduna-Based Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi, has said.
The cleric said this on Monday during a television programme.
Gumi, who believes in a non-kinetic approach to end banditry, has been visiting bandits in their enclaves in the Northwest, to preach to them to embrace dialogue and lay down their arms.
His approach had been faulted by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, who favoured a military approach.
He said: “When I listened to them, I found out that it is a simple case of criminality that turned into banditry, which turned into ethnic war, and some genocide too behind the scene; people don’t know…There is no excuse for any crime; nothing can justify crime, and they are committing a crime.
“I think it is a population that is pushed by circumstances into criminality. And this is what we should look for. Let’s remove the pressure, let’s remove the things that made them criminals because we have lived thousands of years without any problems with nomadic herdsmen. They are peaceful people. But something happened that led them to this.
“So we need to investigate how cattle rustling became a big business in Nigeria and how it affected the socio-cultural behaviour of the nomadic Fulani. They were pushed into criminality.
“It is a complex issue that Nigerians need to understand. The solution is very simple, but it’s not military hardware. The solution is dialogue and teaching.”
