The Federal Government shouldn’t over make the media its scapegoat over its failure to tackle raging insecurity across the country, a Kaduna-based Islamic scholar Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has said.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on THursday said the federal government would sanction Trust TV and the BBC for their documentaries on banditry.
Sheikh Gumi, in his reaction on Friday, said the government is attempting to blackmail media houses to cover its failure and divert public attention from corruption in military expenditure.
The cleric said, “What is happening in Nigeria today especially in the North West as clearly captured by the BBC is more of an ethic war and reprisal killings and attacks due to government’s failure to address well documented instances of injustices that was initially done to the Fulanis,”he said in his weekly lecture.
“What do you expect from a society (Fulani) that were left in total ignorance and lack of education especially when their primary means of livelihood (cattle) has been completely rustled by other criminal elements within and outside our security agencies without any effort by the government to address the injustice.
“As I talk to you now, cattle rustling has not stopped. Many law abiding Fulanis have fallen victims of official extortion of their cows. I have well documented evidence involving some security agents that I personally intervened with. How do you expect as a government to address insecurity especially related to Fulani bandits without addressing such instances of extortion and rustling?”
He said the worrying development now is that the Boko Haram terrorists have infiltrated the Fulani bandits and that the bandits are gradually being indoctrinated by the jihadists.
The cleric said President Buhari should hold his security chiefs accountable.
Sheikh Gumi said, “When a Commander-in-Chief rewards failure with Ambassadorial appointments in a system and a society that records increased attacks, when security agencies cannot even protect Abuja and especially when the Guards Brigade cannot even protect themselves not to talk of the President then why blaming the media for such failure and ineptitude for reporting it?” he asked.
