No school is safe until govt negotiates with bandits, says Gumi

Popular Islamic Scholar, Sheikh Gumi has continued to reiterate the need for the Government to negotiate with bandits. He advised that this should be done in order to cut down on the series of abductions in schools.

He stated this during an interview with The PUNCH on efforts to rescue the kidnapped pupils of Tegina Islamic School, Niger State.

”To secure schools, why not engage the bandits. Engage them; they are not many. You can count them with your fingers. How can you guard schools? It is not possible. In the whole North-West, they may not be more than 100,000 bandits. And that is just a drop in the ocean. That is talking about those with weapons; because not all of them have weapons. Ninety per cent of those who have weapons use them to protect themselves against cattle rustlers. They are victims too. Aerial bombardments will only worsen the situation because when you start killing their children, you remember they also have our children, he said