Group demands Sheik Gumi’s arrest over Abuja-Kaduna train attack

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has implored the Federal Government to quickly arrest a controversial cleric, Sheik Gumi, over bandits attack on Abuja-Kaduna train on Monday.

HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, while lamenting the attack said Gumi has long defended bandits and other marauders, adding that he has been outspoken as a “bandits’ sympathiser” over the years.

He maintained that the cleric has also demanded blanket amnesty for daredevil bandits and venturing into the forests of Zamfara, Katsina, and Niger State to hold discussions with the dreaded bandits that are turning the North-West zone into another place of sorrow, tears, and blood.

The rights group also stated that the declaration of bandits as terrorists by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, as gazetted by the Federal Government in January 2022, in response to an order by Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal High Court in Abuja, was insufficient.

The group suggested that the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), go even farther and declare “bandits’ sympathizers” like Gumi as terrorist.

“Why did the Federal Government capture Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and slammed a blanket ban on his Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) only for pouring invective against the person of Buhari from his London United Kingdom base but the same government through the National Security Adviser to the President Major General Babagana Monguno even openly endorsed the clandestine meetings of terrorists with Sheikh Abubakar Gumi of Kaduna?” HURIWA queried.

“This is double standards and this is the reason why there is so much injustice all around this administration. Why is the government pretending like it never heard or read on the media when Sheikh Gumi said there will be war if the then bandits are declared as terrorists and that he will no longer interface with them after the declaration and now that the war foretold has started and innocent blood is being spilled.

“Why is the government not inviting Sheikh Gumi to say more than he knows about these terrorists he so much defended and even compared them to the Niger Delta resource control agitators? Why is Gumi bigger than the law but Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been languishing in DSS underground cell and allegedly undergoing torture?” The human rights advocacy group demanded answers.