Controversial Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, has suggested measures he believes would help facilitate the release of the students abducted by Fulani herdsmen from the Federal College of Forestry and Mechanisation, Mando, Kaduna State, and help achieve lasting peace in the nation.
Sheik Gumi has courted considerable controversy lately for hobnobbing with bandits and kidnappers, ostensibly trying to make peace.
In a statement he personally signed, entitled: “The Abducted Mando Federal College of Forestry & Mechanisation Students: Time for Deeper Reflection,” the cleric warned against a full-scale military invasion, saying this would lead to great loss of lives, Internally Displaced Persons and considerable human suffering on both sides.
While condemning the inhumane treatment the abducted students are currently going through in the hands of their captors, he said, nonetheless, practical steps must be worked out for the nation to come out of the cycle of mayhem.
He said: “The kidnappers are people who don’t comprehend the consequences of what they are doing. They want to pull down everybody with them down the drain.
“To find a permanent solution to this barbarism, we need cool brains to work out practical steps for the nation to come out of these vicious circles of mayhem. Emotions, sentiments, and wishful thinking can only make things worse.”
Ahmad noted that the task is not a working field for politicians and the press, but rather for social scientists, criminologists, and economists.
“With an overstretched military and the fortresses of the forest capitalized by the enemy, and so many villages and hamlets settled by civilians interspersed, a full-scale military invasion would be disastrous with great loss of lives, IDPs, and human sufferings on both sides,” he warned.
According to him, the militant Fulani herdsmen are natural warriors, now bound by ethnic bonds.
With “good incentives and arbitration”, he said, they could be “the most effective tool to suppress this complex intricate socioeconomic crisis and untangle the dilemma and solve the puzzle.”
He suggested that “if reliable, well-meaning people can go in-between, then we believe some peace will be immediately achieved.
He also made a case for “an energized programme of societal reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reparations.”
With these, he said, “sanity can prevail and peace can come back from its long recession.”
At least 30 students were kidnapped on Thursday night when gunmen suspected to be Fulani herdsmen invaded the school, just weeks after a similar attack in the region.
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