Renowned Islamic scholar, Sheik Ahmad Gumi, on Friday, condemned the federal government’s threat to sanction media outlets for their coverage of the prolonged bandits’ attack across the country.
DAILY POST recalls that the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, had threatened to sanction two media houses, Trust TV and the BBC over documentaries on banditry.
Reacting to the threat by the federal government, Gumi on Friday, urged the media not to be intimidated or succumb to official blackmail and to always make the government accountable, especially, in view of their failure to protect lives and properties
Gumi, while commending local and international media organisations for their boldness in reporting the magnitude of the insecurity in the Northern region, said the happening in Nigeria, especially in the North West as clearly captured by the BBC is more of an ethnic war and reprisal killings and attacks due to government’s failure to address well-documented instances of injustices that were initially done to Fulanis.
According to him, the government’s intention to blackmail media houses to cover its failure and divert public scrutiny into high-level corruption in military spending and budgetary allocations has been exposed
Gumi said, ”what do you expect from a society (Fulani) that were left in total ignorance and lack of education especially when their primary means of livelihood (cattle) has been completely rustled by other criminal elements within and outside our security agencies without any effort by the government to address the injustice, adding that till date, cattle rustling has not stopped.
He said many law-abiding Fulanis have fallen victims to official extortion of their cows, claiming that he has well-documented evidence involving some security agents in which he personally intervened.
“How do you expect as a government to address insecurity especially related to Fulani bandits without addressing such instances of extortion and rustling?” he asked
He said the frightening development now is that the Boko Haram terrorists have infiltrated the Fulani bandits and that the bandits are gradually being indoctrinated into the Boko Haram religious beliefs and mission.
