Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi has established a school for herdsmen in one of the grazing reserves in the state.
The cleric, who has been in the vanguard of granting amnesty to bandits, stated that the provision of infrastructures like schools to herdsmen in their remote locations could help in curbing their violent ideologies.
Gumi also posited that the bandits were ready to lay down their arms if they were provided with some amenities, like schools and others. Gumi disclosed this while answering questions from journalists during an inspection tour to the Sheikh Uthman Bin Fodio Centre at Kagarko Grazing Reserve in Kohoto village yesterday.
According to him: “What motivated me to start this project was to solve the insecurity problem we have from the root because every crime has its perpetrators and every perpetrators are drawn from a pool, so we want to go there and dry the pool and we found out that education is the best cure.
“If they are educated, they will not be doing what they are doing, so we say we must take education to the grassroots and we embarked on the project to also be an example for others, local government, state and federal and rich individuals even cooperative societies to come together and make sure that we are directed across the forest to know what we can do for the nomads, it doesn’t cost much very little and it will help to educate them and we will live peacefully with them.
“What we have here is a centre containing six classrooms that can be used for primary and secondary schools and at various times you can teach all categories at all times and the place will be engaged for 24 hours because the herdsmen usually takes their cattle out by 10am and bring them back by dawn or sunset, so they have two hours before they take their cattle away and we have two to three hours because we will like to put some solar light so that they can read eight, nine, ten o’clock in the night so that the herders can go and come back.”
Gumi named the school, built by the Sheikh Gumi Mosque Foundation Limited, Kaduna, as ‘Sheikh Uthman Bin Fodio Centre’, located at Kagarko Grazing Reserve near Kohoto Village in Kaduna State.
The renowned cleric noted that “If the centre which is designed to educate the herdsmen is replicated everywhere in the country, Nigerians will live in peace. He argued: “Instead of spending billions on military hardware to fight the bandits, Nigeria should spend such money on schools and teachers.
I have spoken with the bandits and they have expressed willingness to drop their arms and embrace peace, if their children can be given education and other social amenities.”