Baba Negedu, KADUNA 
Baba Negedu, KADUNA
Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi has declared that it would not augur well for Nigeria to declare the bandits ravaging the North West and other parts of the country terrorists.
Gumi, who has been at the forefront of negotiating with the bandits, explained that it would be better to allow them as they were and find a way to dislodging them.
Many Nigerians including the Northern Speakers Forum, Kaduna State Government among many others have called for the bandits to be dubbed terrorists But the Islamic cleric in a message posted on his Facebook page noted that terrorist organisations were already angling to conscript the bandits into their fold.
He also said that calling them terrorists would give them religious cover, to perpetrate their crime, especially if they were termed as Islamic terrorists. In the message termed: ‘Declaring Bandits as Terrorists: will come with a prize’, Gumi said: “The acts the bandits are committing now in North West have gradually over time become tantamount to terrorism because wherever innocent people are fatal victims it’s pure terrorism.”
He also said: “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 one other than them is attracted to join them in the North West because of its ethnic tinge and coloration.”
He, however, said: “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 attractiv
