By Reno Omokri

Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi was well known to Nigerians in the 70s and 80s as an extremist Izala Islamic cleric, who had attracted controversy for his views that only Muslims could best rule Nigeria, amongst other sectional views.

It might shock some Nigerians to note that that Sheikh Gumi once publicly called for Muslims to accept only Muslim political leaders (a view once publicly shared by President Muhammadu Buhari).

Sheikh Gumi was a strong Wahabbist and never hid the influence that Saudi Arabia had over him. I would not want to go too much into detail about some of the more outrageous and alarming views held by Sheikh Gumi, in order not to speak ill of the dead.

However, many Nigerian Christians thought that his son, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, was cut from a different cloth, especially after his recent supposed peace ambassadorship.

However, our bubble has been burst, as it is now crystal clear, and an undisputed fact, that the son is just as extreme and radical as the father, if not more so.

His recent utterances, while meeting with bandits (he does not want us to call them bandits), where he was surreptitiously recorded, were as follows:

“What I want you people (bandits) to understand is, soldiers that are involved in most of the criminalities are not Muslims. You know, soldiers have Muslims and non-Muslims. The non-Muslims are the ones causing confusion just to ignite a crisis.”

He never expected the video to leak, but it did. I reached Sheikh Gumi, through a prominent Northerner, to ask him why he made the statement he did and if he had any proof to substantiate his claims and Gumi sent me, through this same high-profile Northerner, an audio, from 2014, where an unnamed man made some wild and unproven claims in a conversation he had with Gumi. And it was based on that that Gumi made his outlandish accusations in 2021.

How can Sheikh Gumi rely on gossip to make such a weighty allegation, when Quran 104:1 condemns gossip and backbiters? Now, I watched Gumi’s damage control interview on Channels Television on Monday, February 22, 2021, and you could see him struggling to spin what he said.

If anyone is tempted to give Gumi the benefit of the doubt, based off of that interview, I will urge them to note that Sheikh Gumi was practicing Taqiyya.

If you do not know what Taqiyya is, then you can never understand Gumi and his ilk.

Basically, Taqiyya is an Islamic principle which gives those Muslims who believe in it license to lie, without it being considered a sin. Taqiyya was the reason why Sheikh Gumi told Seun Okinbaloye, in the said interview, as follows:

“You call them killer herdsmen, how many people do they kill? Sometimes, they are on drugs. They want the money. When they kill, it is mostly accidental, maybe somebody they took who is sick. But tell me who they have killed? How many? Few.”

Even Sheikhh Gumi knows that he is lying when he says that killer herdsmen kill accidentally. It is Taqiyya in action.

Herdsmen, according to the Global Terror Index, are the world’s fourth most deadly terrorists. The GTI lists thousands of individual attacks that occur in Nigeria, where herdsmen deliberately kill or maim, or rape Nigerians.

To claim that these killings are accidental is nothing short of the type of ‘big lie’ propounded by Adolf Hitler, wherein you deceive the public by telling ‘a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

In truth, Sheikh Gumi is not a peace negotiator. He is rather a facilitator of terror, because by telling armed Muslim herdsmen and bandits that Christian soldiers are behind the killing of their kith and kin to ignite a crisis, Sheikh Gumi is feeding their bigotry and warming them up to kill Christians in revenge.

That is the plain, undiluted, and point blank truth.

Now, we heard what he said this time around. What worse things has Sheikh Gumi been saying behind closed doors? Your guess is as good as mine. But whatever it is, it is unlikely to be complimentary towards Christians.

Nigerians famously have a short memory, and would have forgotten that this same Sheikh Gumi wrote a letter in 2014 accusing then President Jonathan of being biased against Islam. This is despite the fact that Jonathan had built 165 almajiri schools. By 2021, after 5 years in power, Buhari has not built even one secondary school, whether almajiri or conventional. But Gumi has not accused him of being biased against Islam.

I guess in Gumi’s eyes, your bias against Islam only arises when you build schools to try to educate some of the 13.5 million out-of-school children in Northern Nigeria so they can think for themselves rather than be led by the nose by the likes of Gumi.

To me, the real news is why Sheikh Gumi has not been invited by the authorities to substantiate his allegations that Christian soldiers kill Muslims to ignite a crisis. That type of talk will affect cohesion and morale in the military, as well as breed mutual suspicion.

In 2017, DSS summoned Apostle Suleman for asking Nigerians to defend themselves against killer herdsmen. In 2020 the same DSS summoned Obadiah Mailafia for exposing a Boko Haram governor. Now, DSS is SILENT as Gumi claims Christian soldiers kill Muslim herdsmen and bandits. And 96 hours after Sheikh Gumi’s lie that Christian soldiers are killing Fulani Muslims, the Presidency has said nothing. Let us not forget that it took Garba Shehu less than 24 hours to shout loudly when Rotimi Akeredolu gave killer herdsmen (not registered herdsmen) quit notice. Sadly, Buhari has turned FGN from the Federal Government of Nigeria, to Fulani Government of Nigeria!

To those who think Muhammadu Buhari is better than Sheikh Gumi, I am sorry for you. Consider the following:

NNPC

NPA

INEC

Executive, Legislature and Judiciary

Army, Navy, MOD, Police, DSS, DMI, DIA, NIA, EFCC.

All headed by Northern Muslim males, appointed by Buhari against the Federal Character Principle. We have never had nepotism at this level. Buhari and Gumi are birds of a feather!

I am just imagining what will be going on in the minds of Christian soldiers of the Nigerian Army after watching what Sheikh Gumi said about them killing Muslims to ignite a crisis.

These are people dying for Nigeria in Borno, Yobe and Kaduna, yet their sacrifices are spat on by a beneficiary of their sacrificed blood! Christian soldiers are in the bush with their Muslim colleagues. They are underpaid, underfed, and underarmed. They are fighting radical Islamic terrorists that are better armed than them. Yet, Sheikh Gumi is accusing those Christian patriots of killing Muslims!

We must not sweep this under the carpet. Gumi must be made to answer for his bigotry, and if he is not brought to book, then we must accept that Nigeria is only one in name, but not in practice!

Originally published at Thisday