A Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh (Dr.) Ahmad Gumi has disclosed that the present insecurity in the country particularly banditry can become a thing of the past as bandits are ready to drop their arms if education opportunities and other basic amenities can be provided for Fulani herdsmen.
Gumi disclosed this while fielding questions from journalists during an inspection visit to the Sheikh Uthman Bin Fodio Centre at Kagarko Grazing Reserve in Kohoto village, donated by Mosque Foundation Limited.
According to the cleric, “what motivated me to start this project was to solve the insecurity problem we have from the root because every crime has its perpetrators and every perpetrator are drawn from a pool, so we want to go there and dry the pool and we found out that education is the best cure.
If they are educated, they will not be doing what they are doing, so we say we must take education to the grassroots and we embarked on the project to also be an example for others, local government, state, and federal and rich individuals even cooperative societies to come together and make sure that we are directed across the forest to know what we can carter for nomads, it doesn’t cost much very little and it will help to educate them and we will live peacefully with them.
What we have here is a center containing six classrooms that can be used for primary, secondary schools and at various times you can teach all categories at all times and the place will be engaged for 24 hours because the herdsmen usually take their cattle out by 10 am and bring them back by dawn or sunset they have two hours before f 10 am they take their cattle away and we have two to three hours because we will like to put some solar light so that they can read eight, nine, 10 o’clock in the night so that the herders can go and come back.
We have schools, we have hospital and also showing them how to grind the foliage which they can use to feed their animals, some of them don’t need to go out because those things are so cheap and farmers are throwing those things away, soon farmers will start charging for it, if we can duplicate this everywhere, Nigerians will live in peace.”
On whether or not he said Nigeria will no longer exist if bandits are declared as terrorists, he said, “It is a quotation out of context, I didn’t say there will be no Nigeria, I said if banditry now has turned into terrorism, fanatical religious terrorism which is there because Islam recognizes religious terrorism, so if we allow the herdsmen to turn recognizes us fanatics and extremists, it will not be good for us as a nation.
