Sheik Gumi is why we all need tribalism

If, by now, Islamic cleric, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, has not categorically denied he told the Muslim bandits he has been meeting in recent times that their enemies are Christian “outsiders,” it means he said what he said, and he is not taking it back. Gumi has been garrulous since he gave himself the job of negotiating with domestic terrorists supposedly on behalf of the country. He has even blamed Niger Delta militants for teaching Fulani herdsmen the criminality with which they are ravaging the whole country. Gumi is acting blind, and that is not because he is deformed. He wants to justify using a walking stick and then poke everyone’s eyes with it. His pronouncements give him away, not as someone looking for peace for Nigeria but merely pandering to an emerging power base in his neck of woods. Power has changed hands in northern Nigeria, and the formerly respected voices like Gumi can no longer find a relevance commensurate with that of those who speak with AK-47s.

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The millions of almajiri children whose destinies the northern elite stole to feather their private nests have now grown up, and they are upsetting the social order through sociopathic ferocity. They have morphed into all shades of terrorism. The same weapon of violence their leaders have always used to assert power has fallen into the hands of these plebeians, and they are making their leaders quake with trepidation. These barbarians have tasted blood, and are no longer content to be summarily corralled into rigging their theocentric leaders into power during election periods. They have found new relevance, and they are making huge sums of money out of it. These terrorists have not only managed to reduce the myth of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and his once-touted military expertise to rubble, but they are also now bracketing the nation’s choices to either paying them ransom for their abducted victims or giving them official roles. For people like Gumi to remain relevant in this emergent political order, he has to find a way to be in the good books of these brutes. That is why he is practically grovelling before them and forming their mouthpiece. Gumi is not looking for peace; he is a dangerous clout-chaser.