Tag: Sheik Gumi

“Gide is so powerful in that area that he collects monthly taxes from farmers and herdsmen. The recent attack was also carried out by him. After killing them (vigilantes), he refused to grant access to pick their bodies until soldiers stormed the forest on Thursday to collect the bodies. About 25 bodies have been recovered so far,”

Masari said he does not support the approach of popular Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, who had been seen hobnobbing with bandits in the forests of Zamfara and Niger States and who has asked for blanket amnesty for bandits, saying they are fighting “an ethnic war”.

“My interaction with bandits has yielded instant results. When you are dealing with somebody engrossed in criminality, if you approach him as a policeman, you will have a problem but if you come to him as a pastor, he will confess all his sins.

“They are not the ones that abducted the girls. It is a splinter group.”

“Attacks have lessened, it is just one case we have of the Kagara boys. We have seen an absolute change in Zamfara and Sokoto States where negotiations are going on.

“And there is an allegation: the military don’t want this conflict to end because of the billions of Naira they claim for fighting insurgency. So the military is not cooperating.