By Abiodun Awolaja, December 13, 2025
F and then the government decides to stop terrorism in Nigeria, it will put the Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, rightly where he belongs among condemned criminals. For years, Gumi has undermined the Nigerian State with impunity, and his latest statement (during an interview with the BBC), wherein he boldly declared that the Nigerian military cannot defeat the terrorists called “bandits” through warfare is only one in a long series of subversive statements designed to empower terrorists and put the lives of Nigerians in perpetual peril. If the Nigerian military cannot defeat terrorists, then why fight at all? Why not just surrender the Nigerian State to Gumi’s beloved terrorists?
By saying that the Nigerian government MUST negotiate with terrorists to deescalate insecurity in the North-West, Gumi isn’t merely offering advice: he is telling terrorists that they are invincible. Typically, those who support terrorists share their beliefs or goals, belong to a network that supports them, and expect some financial incentives. They view terrorists as freedom fighters and utilise traditional/online echo chambers to purvey their propaganda. Among other authors, Marc Sageman, author of Understanding Terror Networks, has laid bare the process of radicalisation and recruitment into terrorist networks. It is a no-brainer that weak or ineffective governance, foreign support or sponsorship, and successful attacks embolden terrorists to perpetuate bloodshed and extortion.
Sageman says that radicalisation often occurs through social networks and friendships, that ideology often follows radicalisation, and that individuals often move quickly from radicalisation to action. That is why I am gutted that the government has allowed Gumi unrestrained space to preach his subversion for decades. If certain northern youths keep getting recruited by terrorists, might it not be due in large part to the signals by people like Gumi? Surely, if Gumi had tried half of the stunts he’s staged here in places like North Korea or Saudi Arabia, he would have long decayed in his grave! Let him go to a Red state in, say, the United States and tell the government what he told BBC: “Where have you ever seen the military defeat guerrilla fighters? Nowhere.” And to think that Gumi made his incendiary comments following President Bola Tinubu’s order to security agents to ensure the release of all the schoolchildren abducted by terrorists! If anyone had made such a statement during the Civil War, he would have been shot.
In October 2021, the astute defender of terrorism proclaimed: “Declaring bandits as terrorists will come with a price!” He claimed that if President Muhammadu Buhari declared bandits as terrorists, it would mark the end of Nigeria as a sovereign and united entity!
It’s no surprise, then, that he recently asserted that the United States would be unable to eliminate terrorists in Nigeria. Speaking with VOP TV, Gumi reiterated the same garbage he has purveyed for years, namely that terrorists are “reasonable” people. God have mercy! Those who feed newborns to dogs are Gumi’s men of reason! Hear the ideological leper: “I’ve been trying to see how we can pacify these people (terrorists) and redirect them because they are human beings. They listen and reason, but if you say you want to use force against force, then you will compound the problem and make the thing dirty.” So, Mr Gumi, what your beloved terrorists have been doing for years isn’t dirty, but it is effective governmental response to their terror that would be dirty?? Demoralising military troops is a serious offense in many countries. Why is this guy not in jail?
On February 25, 2021, this pestilential fellow had the audacity to warn the media: “Do not call bandits criminals if you want them to surrender.” The online platform, Legit.ng, reported in outrage: “Gumi continues to advocate for the bandits… According to him, if the media wants them to surrender their weapons and embrace peace, it should use nice words to describe the bandits.”
To me, a robber and a fraudster are companions; the errand boy of terrorists is a terrorist. It is not for nothing that a thief finds comfort in the bosom of a whore; they work for the same master. That is why if you are looking for rogues and robbers, you look for the women of the night. Gumi has no care for the widows of soldiers slaughtered in the theatres of war, or the wives of officers maimed for life. He isn’t bothered about the young boys and girls orphaned in the cruelest of circumstances, or the communities which saw their members being ripped apart with bullets and bayonets. He has no tear for those burnt to death in worship centres. No. His sympathies lie with those who bring down military aircraft and make farms and fields crimson with innocent blood. How can such a beast be allowed to live among decent people?
Gumi has repeatedly defied the Nigerian State. He has canvassed the rights of terrorists, spat on the graves of soldiers who died fighting Boko Haram/ISWAP, wounded widows with his open deification of the killers of their husbands, and caused their children pain that words cannot capture. Yet he walks the streets as a free man because of his ethnic/religious immunity, the same immunity never extended down South. By his actions, he is telling military widows that their husbands died as fools. He is telling the communities laid to waste in Plateau and Benue, and across Nigeria, that they suffered genocide for nothing, and that their pain has only just begun. He is waging a psychological war on the rest of Nigeria on behalf of his terrorist friends. He is telling the killers that they are right and slaughtering the families of their victims with his bilious words. And I ask, why is Sheikh Gumi walking the streets as a free man?
Re: The constant appeasement of killer-herders
The constant appeasement of killer-herders in Nigeria is irritating and condemnable. There is no tenable reason why herdsmen should be allowed to carry AK-47 rifles with impunity across the country. It shows FG weakness in stopping such an act of criminality. And until something drastic is done to obliterate such lawlessness, our solution to insecurity in Nigeria will be wishful thinking. Killer-herders should not be treated with kids’ gloves. And one wonders: Are the killer-herdsmen above the law or the government is so powerless to do the needful? Or is it politics at play? These are probing questions the political class should provide cogent answer to. Satis est satis(Enough is enough). Yacoob Abiodun 0810 350 1024
Your piece today is so pleasing to me that I just must thank you. Honestly, nothing embitters me about Nigeria more than the way we have subjected ourselves and our resources to the FULANI. Just read the Petition sent by the Hausa to the ICC. They are the reason our power contests have degenerated to the current farce, because it’s either you seek their assistance or you create strategies against them: 0905 533 3780.
Abiodun Awolaja is a columnist with Nigerian Tribune