Going by his recent postulations, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi believes that bandits are not criminals, and so they should not be addressed in such terms. In truth, the cleric is concerned with what the bandits can perpetrate in their wrath, and the public must wonder if there is after all no ulterior motive behind his bandit empathy. But not all the flak he drew for suggesting that bandits should be granted amnesty would deter him from repeatedly defending them. Sheikh Gumi has gained, in recent times, the reputation of being anti-justice and pro-terror, but in his appearance at a televised broadcast last week, he urged Nigerians to do what they will and say what they must, but the bandits, the shy men that they are, must be accorded the respect their enterprise deserves. They are simply not criminals, he deadpanned. Hardly is there a bandit kidnapping in Nigeria these days, but Sheikh Gumi would be found placating the bandits most earnestly, for he thinks them more terrible in their wrath than the country can cope with.
Continuing his trend of bandit advocacy, the sheikh aired his belief during the televised broadcast that the media was the true criminal as it had only hounded bandits and called them criminals. He wondered how the bandits, youths in their prime, were expected to cooperate despite being ready to hand down their weapons. What the situation wanted, said the cleric, is that bandits be shown that they are Nigerians. Being primus inter pares, they must be placated and taught that it is not right to hurt children, but that they should be law abiding. Woe betides kidnapped adults then! Sheikh Gumi went on to drawl extensively and doltishly on the bandit rights and image portrayal, furnishing his arguments with the macabre logic that the best way to disarm a criminal is by deferring to the criminal’s wish, regardless of if the criminal is less armed than the potential victim is. To the sheikh, what does it matter that hundreds have died? What does it matter that people have been forcefully separated from their hard-earned money? What matters is that anyone with spunk enough to take up crime must not be addressed as a criminal but as a bandit, must not be alienated but celebrated, and must not be castigated but reintegrated and given a better life, perhaps even honoured.
In those few arguments, the confounding cleric effectively betrayed his bias. Even those who came mightily to his defence at the moment of his initial outing have started to distance themselves from his manic doting on non-existent bandit rights. He is a sober looking fellow, they will tell themselves, but the man has a death wish. There is no way to defend the sheikh’s bucolic sense of humour. Distance will lend enchantment to whatever support they have for his slanted philosophising. Nothing anyone will say to the cleric can assure him that the bandits have erred unforgivably and cannot in any logical sense be buttered. The mere thought of amnesty for these bandits is anathema to justice, natural or unnatural. There are five crimes under Nigerian jurisprudence punishable with the death penalty: armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, treason and treachery. A good prosecution counsel will not find it hard to pin all five crimes on the bandits, meaning in a sense that it is difficult to see how the bandits will escape the death sentence when they are apprehended and tried under the Criminal Code of Nigeria. A good prosecution counsel will indeed be able to strike the fear of justice into the Sheikh by attempting to rope him in as an accomplice either by act or by omission. The fear of bandits has clearly divorced the cleric from the fear of the same God of which the Qur’an says; “And the heaven He raised and imposed the balance. That you (do) not transgress the balance. And establish weight in justice and do not make deficient the balance.” There is neither justice nor balance in using taxpayers’ money to butter men who have hurt and murdered taxpayers ceaselessly and remorselessly. It encourages robbery to preach bandit amnesty.
Indeed, Sheikh Gumi must draw the curtains on his offensive logic. He has had his day, he has had his moments in the spotlight, but all things must come to a necessary end, and the time has come for that. How can he persist in his views even after another 317 female students were kidnapped on Thursday night in Zamfara? He must now summon the willpower to entomb the same warped sense of justice, which has exposed Governor Bala Mohammed, Governor Bello Matawalle and other prominent Nigerians, including himself, to ridicule.