Why deploying clerics to forests can end banditry

Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, has reiterated his call for non-violent engagements, such as religious education, for ending banditry in Nigeria’s North-west and North-central regions.

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Mr Gumi restated this position in a short statement he posted on Facebook on Wednesday.

The cleric argued that military strategy alone is insufficient and called for sending credible Islamic scholars to armed groups hiding in the forests.

“Since 2021—now 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 added that non-kinetic engagement would reduce the need for military operations, lamenting that public perception overlooked the root 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, adding, “People are the victims of their own prejudice!”

Gumi’s forest missions and outreach

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

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During a February 2021 trek into the Dutsen Magaji forest in Niger State, following the abduction of students from Government Secondary School Kagara, Mr Gumi was received by heavily armed young men carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

In the camps, Mr Gumi set up makeshift preaching points. He preached that injustice suffered by herders did not justify taking innocent human lives, ambushing commuters, or raiding villages.

“In Islam, there is no justification at all for reprisal attacks, killings, kidnappings, and rape,” Mr Gumi told the bandits during the forest meetings, urging them to seek formal Islamic education, observe daily prayers, and drop their weapons.

Mr Gumi also advocated a federal rehabilitation model similar to the Niger Delta Presidential Amnesty Programme.

He said offering amnesty, schools, basic healthcare, and integrating repentant pastoralists into security roles—such as forest guards—would hit banditry faster than airstrikes.

READ ALSO: Gumi sues man who accused him of abducting Moroccan wife

While critics have expressed concern that negotiating with criminal elements legitimises terrorism, Mr Gumi maintains that ignoring the socio-economic and educational deficits driving young men into the woods will only prolong the conflict.

Banditry in Nigeria’s North-west and North-central—encompassing Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, and Kwara— began as localised resource friction between local crop farmers and pastoralist herders before evolving into widespread, commercialised terrorism.