- His unsettling chumminess with these criminal elements and his public remarks aimed at humanising them were met with opprobrium by many Nigerians
Our Nigeria is a lot like Indian rubber. A little causes it to swell and a lot will not burst it or make it snap. This make-up is what makes Nigeria intriguing in an unsettling kind of way, and keeps the outside world on tenterhooks or in suspense. Our seeming penchant for absurdities leaves people in working and saner climes gasping for air.
On Monday, news filtered through broke that Renowned Islamic scholar Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has been deported from Saudi Arabia after being denied entry into Medina, effectively barring him from participating in the 2025 Hajj pilgrimage. Not many Nigerians who are aware of Gumi’s position on religious matters and national issues, especially the brutal activities of bandits and terrorists in many parts of the Middle Belt and northern part of the country, were surprised by the development. His extreme religious beliefs he espoused and his association with armed non-state actors are public knowledge and are well documented.
His deportation last week from Saudi Arabia is not the first time he has had a brush with the authorities in the oil-rich Middle East nation. In 2010, Gumi was arrested in Saudi Arabia was in 2010 when was arrested and detained for over six months by the Saudi government for allegedly relating with Farouk Abdulmutaĺlab, a Nigerian arrested in the US for terrorism. Abdulmutallab, dubbed the ”Christmas Bomber,” was accused of attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day 2009.
According to IcIR, the United States shared intelligence with the Saudi authorities that Mr Gumi had been in contact and exchanging emails with Farouk Abdulmutallab shortly before the incident.
He was later released following the intervention of the Nigerian government after spending many months under house arrest in Mecca.
The content of the emails he exchanged with Abdulmutallab were not made public but they must have been of troubling nature to spook the government of the United States and Saudi Arabia. Upon his return to Nigeria, Gumi continued his engagement in activities that bordered on religious extremism. At the height of the nefarious activities of bandits in the northwest in 2023 and 2024, Gumi turned himself into their spokesperson and not only justified their diabolical and unconscionable deeds but also facilitated ransom payment between the bandits and the families of those they kidnapped.
He had called for “blanket amnesty”, noting that “If the country could pardon coup plotters who committed treasonable offences in the era of military administration, the bandits can as well enjoy similar forgiveness even better under democratic rule.” On another occasion, he said: “Kidnapping children from school is a lesser evil because, in the end, you can negotiate, and now bandits are very careful about human lives. Before, the mission of bandits was to go into a town, ransack it and kill people.
His unsettling chumminess with these criminal elements and his public remarks aimed at humanising them were met with opprobrium by many Nigerians and sparked outrage along religious, regional and tribal lines. Gumi’s relationship with the bandits sowed a seed of doubt in many Nigerians mind as to whether the government is serious about ending insecurity in the country, especially banditry. Many wonder why Gumi has not been brought in for questioning over his ties with the bandits or why the security operatives were not able to locate and neutralise these bandits that a private citizen has been meeting with.
If Saudi Arabia, the nation where two of the most sacred sites in Islam are located, and millions of Muslims thronged there yearly to perform pilgrimage, found Gumi’s activities to be disturbing to the extent that they banned him from entering the country, why then has the Nigerian government ignore him. Gumi had claimed his deportation from Saudi Arabia was not unconnected to his criticism of the kingdom over its position on the happenings in the Middle East, especially the Israeli war in Gaza.
Even if one is to believe that he was unfairly treated in Saudi Arabia because of his criticism of the country, his link to terrorism in the past and his relationship with bandits, who kidnapped, killed and pillaged, made his position untenable and justified the decision of Saudi Arabia.
While countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordan and few other Islamic nations have managed to separate terrorism from Islam and are dealing with it accordingly, the Nigerian government is not only paying lip service to terrorism but also mollycoddling terrorists and other criminal elements through various programmes designed to shield them from being punished from their heinous crime.
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