Gumi raised the question in a Facebook post on Saturday, and he drew a direct comparison between the peaceful outcomes recorded in the South-South region and the continuing violence in Nigeria’s North-East and North-West. According to him, both former President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo once visited militant camps in the creeks, and their engagements eventually produced programmes that reduced hostilities and restored a measure of stability to the oil-producing region.
The cleric therefore challenged current leaders to consider a similar approach for Boko Haram and armed bandits, even though he acknowledged that such a move would likely attract public criticism. “Who is going to visit BH and Bandits to tame them without fools castigating them?” Gumi wrote, capturing the frustration that has defined much of his advocacy over the years.
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Still, Gumi insists that his advocacy has never amounted to support for terrorism. Instead, he frames his interventions as a pragmatic response to a security crisis that military operations alone have struggled to resolve. In addition, he points to the Niger Delta amnesty programme, first launched in 2009 under President Umaru Yar’Adua and later expanded under Jonathan, as concrete proof that negotiated settlements can succeed where confrontation has failed.
Meanwhile, Nigeria continues to grapple with overlapping security threats. Boko Haram remains internationally designated as a terrorist organisation, and its fighters have carried out mass killings, suicide bombings, and cross-border attacks for more than a decade. Banditry, on the other hand, has spread rapidly across the North-West and parts of North-Central Nigeria, and it has left thousands of communities exposed to kidnapping and violent raids. As a result, many observers note that the security landscape today differs significantly from the resource-control disputes that once defined Niger Delta militancy.
Even so, Gumi’s question lingers, and it appears he intends to keep asking it. His latest remarks arrive at a time when the Federal Government continues to emphasise sustained military operations against insurgents and armed groups, insisting that security forces remain focused on degrading terrorist networks across the North-East and North-West. Whether his call for dialogue gains traction, or whether it is dismissed once again, remains to be seen.
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