The federal government of Nigeria said it has invited Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi for questioning over his remarks on the activities of bandits in the country.
Mohammed Idris, minister of information and orientation disclosed while speaking to journalists at the State House, in Abuja on Monday.
The controversial cleric criticised the Federal Government for the continued use of force or kinetic means to secure the release of victims of kidnapping.
Gumi said the government ought to go closer to the bandits and study them to provide them with better living conditions.
According to him, the government’s use of force has now turned the bandits into monsters.
According to him: “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.”
“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,” he said.