Stop Using Force On Bandits, Give Them Amnesty Like Niger-Delta Militants – Buni To FG

Sheik Ahmad Buni, a controversial Islamic cleric, has criticized the Federal Government once more for using physical force or other coercive measures to achieve the release of kidnapped victims, particularly the 287 students and instructors who were kidnapped from a school in Kaduna state lately.

Speaking on an Arise Television program that was aired in Abuja on Thursday, Gumi stated that in order to provide the bandits better living conditions, the government should get to know them better.

He claims that the bandits have now become monsters as a result of the government’s use of force.

He said; “These bandits are getting more vicious. Before they were not doing this. They are heading to softer targets and we can only attribute this to the kinetic approach.

“Now we are fighting bandits. They are anonymous. You cannot fight someone you don’t even know. We said let’s go in, let us know them, let’s map them out – know who they are and where they belong. All this intelligence information is virtually not there. The high-handed approach to the matter is what is making it worse. Now they are kidnapping children and threatening death, which they were not doing before. So, I think what to do is really go back to the drawing board and be truly non-kinetic”.

He suggested that the government create a scheme like to the Niger Delta militants’ amnesty programme in order to reverse the trend.

‘You need a programme just like the Niger Delta, a programme which will bring them out of their forests, educating then, giving them healthcare, giving them peaceful life. This is how you entice people to abandon violence and militancy. But when you continue dropping bombs, they will find no sympathy and empathy for our children. This is it. An eye for an eye. This is what is happening. So, we have to change our tactics, we have to change our styles.

We know leaders of bandits

“The government, everybody knows their leader. In fact, there is a book, ‘I am a bandit by one Murtala, an Academic. He listed more than 160 bandit leaders. We know their leaders by their names but you don’t know their foot soldiers. You don’t know all of them. So, you just know their leaders. If you don’t know their foot soldiers, how can you be fighting? They can just come into the town as civilians and then go out”. [CONTINUE READING HERE]