How Religious Leaders Can Help Stop Banditry in Nigeria

Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, has repeated his call for peaceful actions like religious education to stop banditry in Nigeria’s North-west and North-central areas.

Mr Gumi shared this view in a brief statement on Facebook on Wednesday.

He said that using military force alone will not solve the problem. He suggested sending trusted Islamic scholars to talk to armed groups hiding in the forests.

“Since 2021, almost six years since we began preaching to bandits, one cannot help but imagine what could have been achieved if many credible Islamic scholars had been systematically deployed to engage bandits across the North-west, teaching them the sanctity of human life, the inviolability of people’s property, and the Islamic prohibition of killing and oppression,” Mr Gumi said.

He believes that peaceful engagement would lessen the need for military action. He expressed concern that many people do not see the real causes of the insurgency.

“Very few people seem to understand that many of these bandits are themselves products of the same ignorance, deprivation, and social neglect that have allowed the crisis to flourish,” he noted. He added, “People are the victims of their own prejudice!”

Gumi’s Outreach to Bandits

Mr Gumi has made several self-funded and supported peace missions to bandits’ camps since early 2021.

In February 2021, he went into the Dutsen Magaji forest in Niger State after students were kidnapped from Government Secondary School Kagara. He was met by armed young men with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

At the camps, Mr Gumi set up makeshift preaching spots. He taught that the injustices faced by herders do not justify killing innocent people, ambushing travelers, or attacking villages.

“In Islam, there is no justification at all for reprisal attacks, killings, kidnappings, and rape,” Mr Gumi told the bandits during these meetings. He encouraged them to seek formal Islamic education, pray regularly, and give up their weapons.

Mr Gumi also proposed a federal rehabilitation plan like the Niger Delta Presidential Amnesty Programme.

He said giving amnesty, providing schools, basic healthcare, and involving repentant pastoralists in security roles, like forest guards, would be more effective in stopping banditry than airstrikes.

While some critics worry that negotiating with criminals might legitimize terrorism, Mr Gumi insists that ignoring the social and educational problems pushing young men into the forests will only make the conflict worse.

Banditry in Nigeria’s North-west and North-central, covering Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, and Kwara, started as local disputes between farmers and herders before turning into widespread, commercialized terrorism.