A popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has postponed talks with any group of bandits in Kaduna State because of the state government’s stance banning such moves, the assistant cleric revealed.
Gumi media assistant Malam Salisu Hassan said in an interview with SaharaReporters on Thursday that the priest had stopped his plans because the state government was not interested in negotiations.
“No, it’s not that the Sheikh is busy. The problem is that, since the government is not interested in reconciling with these people, the Sheikh simply tried to have some other way so that he could achieve his goals. The Kaduna state government has said they are not interested in negotiations, ”Hassan said.
The bandits continued to carry out attacks on the state of Kaduna, especially with the latest episode being the attack on a private university, Greenfield University in Kasarami, next to the Kaduna-Abuja road in the Chikun local government area.
It was confirmed that the bandits killed a member of the university staff, Paul Ude Okafor, while a number of students were abducted.
On Saturday alone, parents of the remaining 29 students abducted from the Federal School of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, Kaduna state, revealed that the bandits were threatening to kill the students and marry their colleagues.
About 39 students were abducted from dormitories on March 11, 2020, but 10 students – seven men and three women – were released last week after suspicions that their parents had paid ransoms.
The kidnappers demanded a ransom of ND 500 million from the Kaduna state government, but Governor Nasir El-Rufai promised that his administration would not negotiate with the bandits.
El-Rufai insisted that the government would not negotiate with the bandits, and also incriminated all forms of negotiations on behalf of the government.
It was recently announced that the governor said that the only way to end the robbery in Nigeria was “for the army to kill them all.”
El-Rufai said the army should storm the forests where the bandits reside and bomb the entire place, thus eliminating them.
He spoke Wednesday in Abuja at a dialogue titled “Financing Safe Schools: Creating Communities for Safe Learning”.
El-Rufai also revealed that all northern governors agreed that the bandits must be wiped out.
He said, “Our position as governor and in that we are unanimous, because we, the governors of the northern states, have met with the president on this topic, our unanimous position is to wipe out the bandits.
“We have to enter these forests; no one living in that forest is innocent and just kills them all. That’s the only way to end this. “
The governor also revealed that the army needed sophisticated weapons to effectively destroy the bandits.