Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, on Sunday said the amnesty he proposed for bandits in the North should be extended to the Fulani involved in kidnappings in the South.
Gumi, who stated this in an interview with one of our correspondents, also said the bandits involved in kidnappings were not foreigners, but Nigerians.
The prominent cleric had after a meeting with bandits in Zamfara State forests two weeks urged government to grant them amnesty.
He also met bandits along Kaduna-Abuja road, which had witnessed a series of kidnappings and killings.
After the kidnapping at Kagara, Niger State on Wednesday, Gumi also visited the state and held a meeting with some bandits.
Justifying his call for extension of amnesty to the South, Gumi said everyone carrying a gun should also be included for the country to have a fresh start.
He noted that northern governors, except Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, had accepted his reaching out to bandits in the North.
Gumi insisted that the bandits involved in kidnappings were not foreigners, but Nigerians.
He said, “People don’t know the Fulani at all. They are not after money. Even when they are burning houses in Oyo, don’t you see where they live? They stay in huts. They are not into buying flashy cars. They just like their cattle. The money they are collecting from kidnappings, they are buying weapons with them. The more you fight them, the more they fight back. They don’t surrender. They are saying if the air force continues to pester them, they will have to get anti-aircraft.
“Not all of them are criminals; the hard-line (position) taken against them turned them into the militants that they are. They showed me a village, which does not belong to the Fulani, but was bombarded by the air force. A well was filled with dead bodies. The air force killed them because they thought it’s a Fulani enclave, if they are Fulani, what about the wives and children? It is the military that produced these monsters, just like they did with the Boko Haram. We need dialogues with them.
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