Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, says Sheikh Ahmed Gumi deviated from what he supposed to do as a cleric to bring an end to banditry in the North.
Gumi, a Kaduna-Based Islamic cleric, has appealed to the Federal Government to offer amnesty to the gunmen, like it did to the Niger Delta militants.
Gumi had visited several bandits enclaves, trying to speak to them to lay down their arms.
But Masari, while speaking on a television programme on Thursday, faulted the cleric’s approach.
He said: “I don’t support Sheikh Gumi’s intervention because he did not do it rightly.
” I expect him to, first of all, preach to them (the bandits), the implication of killing innocent people and also the implication of abducting people and its consequences. That is what I expect a clergyman first and foremost to do.”
Gumi had said the bandits engaged in their criminal act because the society marginalized and victimized them.
Masari said: “The stories they are telling him (Gumi) are the stories they said in 2015, the same story in 2019. What does he know about the forest? Is he victimizing killings?”
Kaduna State Governor Nasiru El-Rufai had also faulted Gumi’s intervention. He had said bandits shouldn’t be treated with kids clove.
El-Rufai argued that bandits who are used to collecting millions of naira as ransom will not just lay down their arms in the name of dialogue.
He favoured a military approach that will force the gunmen to surrender.
