Former presidential aspirant, Adamu Garba, says security
forces in the country are not honest in their efforts to crush bandits
terrorising the North-West part of the country.
He said renowned Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud
Gumi was able to locate and hold a peace talk with bandits in Zamfara State
because he employed a non-combative approach.
Garba, who spoke on a PUNCH Live programme over the weekend,
said combative approach has not yielded any result since the country started
its counter-insurgency and anti-banditry war over 10 years ago.
Sheikh Gumi had visited different bandits’ camps in Zamfara
to spread the message of Islam and peace in order to rid the country of
kidnappings and banditry.
“Let there be peace; you all have a legitimate concern and
grievances, and I believe that since the Niger Delta armed militants were
integrated by the Federal Government and are even in the business of pipelines
protection, the Federal Government should immediately look into how something
like that will be done to the Fulani to provide them with reasonable means of
livelihood including jobs, working capitals, entrepreneurship training,
building clinic and schooling,” Sheikh Gumi had told the bandits during the
visits.
Responding to questions on how best to tackle the insecurity
in the North-West and North-East geopolitical zones of the country, Garba said,
“Giving them money itself is empowering what they are doing. You can’t
neutralise a bandit or a terrorist with money, you will use money to empower
him. You can neutralise him by bringing his understanding on the table and show
him that he belongs, rather than an external person that should be destroyed.”
Continuing, he said, “The security agents say they don’t
know where they (bandits) are and they cannot find them but they are not
altogether honest.
“What is the total size of Nigeria? So, you can actually
locate them but the problem is that can you confront them and neutralise them
using fire power? That is the question. A security man will go there with his
own AK-47 and some tanks and bombs, that is what he wants to use. He has to
plan and to the best of his knowledge, as long as he is not ready to confront
them, he didn’t see them.
“But Sheikh Gumi said, ‘I come in peace, you can search me,
I just want to talk, know what is your problem so that I can tell the public
you plights, that was why they said, ‘Okay, we are lowering our guards, we will
allow you to come, we will tell you our frustration and then we will let you go
in peace’.
“If the government should have cultivated that kind of
approach, it will have been easier.”
The ex-presidential aspirant further said unfair
distribution of economic resources was the spine of the various security
challenges confronting the nation.
“Economics is the root cause and the perfect solution to
this problem. So, until our politicians or leaders begin to look at economic
approach to this problem by lowering their guards and approaching everyone at
his own level to bring them on board, we will always be having this problem,”
Garba said.
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