Freed Oyo pupils and their teacher
For many years since the rise of culturally motivated banditry and Islamist inspired terrorism in northern Nigeria, the region and its elite have blamed everything and everyone but the main culprits for the widespread insecurity ravaging the country. When it was no longer a problem Goodluck Jonathan’s “cluelessness” it became an issue “climate change, poverty and illiteracy” under the northern presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, just as it has been politicised in President Tinubu’s Nigeria to be a ‘weak and uncaring of the north” government. And whenever government proposes a hard military approach towards tackling the menace of insecurity, the religious, political and technocratic establishment of the north speaking through a man known as Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, will urge for restraint and instead ask government to negotiate with bandits terrorising the people of the region.
In fact leading lights of the north including late President Muhammadu Buhari, prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Gumi, former minister and Arewa Consultative Forum Chieftain, Bashir Dalhatu, former executive secretary of NHIS, Professor Usman Yusuf amongst many others have called on the federal government to grant amnesty to terrorists operating in the region as was the case with Niger Delta militants under the administration of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua. And when Muhammadu Buhari, one of the region’s was beloved politicians emerged as President of Nigeria in 2015, hush and mum over escalating violence arising from banditry was urged in order to protect the image of one of “our own” in power. So, for many years, states like Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi and most parts of the North West were devastated by mass killings, abductions, kidnappings for ransom and highway robbery without the outside world knowing much of the orgy of violence as the people were urged to suffer in silence in order to protect the image of President Buhari.
