Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a controversial Islamic scholar based in Kaduna, has warned against declaring bandits to be terrorists, claiming that such action by the government will come with a price.
On Saturday, the Speakers of Nigeria’s 36 state Houses of Assembly demanded that the Federal Government declare bandits and kidnappers terrorists, and that kidnapping and banditry be dealt with harshly.
The Speakers made the appeal after Nasir el-Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, and the National Assembly made similar demands.
Gumi, in a statement titled ‘Declaring Bandits As Terrorists Will Come With A Price,’ responded to the calls by saying that the instant bandits are labeled terrorists, direct foreign Jihadist activities will spring up in force.
Many unemployed teenagers, he believes, will find this tolerable and appealing.
The statement read in part: “Nobody doubts that sentimentalism today overrides sensibility in our polity. For the sake of posterity, some people will have to speak out.
“The acts the bandits are committing now in NW have gradually over time become tantamount to terrorism because wherever innocent people are fatal victims it’s pure terrorism. Yet, innocence these days is relative. We agreed if their children and women are also killed, they are guilty by association or collateral damage, so also the bandits may think the same way. It’s right for vigilantes to lynch Fulanis herdsmen or anyone that looks like them by profiling but wrong for the herdsmen to ransack villages in retribution. They are pushed to believe it is an existential war and in war, ethics are thrown to the winds.
“Yet again, the only helpful part that is against bandits is that no other than them are attracted to join them in the NW because of its ethnic tinge and coloration.
“However, the moment they are termed Terrorist – Islamic for that matter, the direct foreign Jihadist movements will set in in force. And many teaming unemployed youths may find it palatable and attractive. Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ plus AK47 against a ‘secular’ immoral society where impunity reigns are the magnet for extremists and downtrodden – the majority of our youth.
“Already these deadly terrorist groups are fighting for the soul of these bandits. This will give criminality a spiritual cover and remove the stigma of discrediting them with such crimes since now they are fighting a ‘Jihad’ as they will claim.
“In such a situation, does the larger society -as it is, has the moral high ground to fight back? This is the most probable consequence, the price of which is not worth it. Nothing stops the kinetic actions from going on without the controversy of semantics.”
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