The founder of the One Love Family, Sat Guru Maharaj Ji, says a popular Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, and Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai are part of the problems confronting the country.
The Prophet accused Gumi and El-Rufai of openly supporting and encouraging banditry and kidnapping in the country.
Speaking exclusively to SaharaReporters, Maharaj Ji said, “There is this rumour going on that Gumi is a holy man, I said no. The antecedents of the Gumi family can be traced back to when a Nigerian-born automobile engineer who tried to denote a bomb wired to his underwear aboard an American flight was caught. When he was arrested, they found out that he communicated with Gumi, that doesn’t mean though.
“His father also came out and made a statement that no Southerner can be President of Nigeria, I was offended and told him ‘no no no’. I told him and others that a President can come from anywhere. I opposed them, at the end of the day, a Southerner became Nigeria’s President after his death.
“I’m not against his son, but anybody living with bandits must prove to be a saint. He can’t go there alone. There must be intelligence officers following him, the army, the police ought to follow him there to know all he has been saying.
“So Gumi is not somebody for any human being to rely on. That brings the case of El-Rufai from Kaduna. For any human being, head of government for that matter to pay bandits so that they can leave us alone is sad. That means he is not fit to be a leader. It’s never done anywhere in the world.
“As I’m talking now, I don’t respect Gumi and El-Rufai, they are not helping Nigeria at all. We don’t want to see them, they should go anywhere they like.”
Indeed, Gumi had said he was accompanied to the hideouts of bandits by security operatives.
This has made many Nigerians to ask why security agencies have not flushed out the bandits since they know where they are.
El-Rufai in 2016 said his government traced some violent, aggrieved Fulani to their countries and paid them to stop the killing of Southern Kaduna natives and the destruction of their communities.
Gumi was also arrested and detained for over six months by the Saudi Arabian government in 2010 for allegedly relating with Nigerian underwear bomber and terrorist, Farouk Abdulmutallab.
The Islamic cleric was arrested in February 2010 in Mecca at the request of the United States government for exchanging e-mails with Abdulmutallab.
It was learnt that Gumi, who is currently advocating for bandits in Nigeria to be granted amnesty and not called criminals, was arrested after the US security browsed through Abdulmutallab’s e-mail and found out that he corresponded with him shortly before he attempted to bomb a plane on December 25, 2009, in the US.
The cleric was first taken to Jeddah but was returned to Mecca and put under house arrest for many months before the intervention of the Nigerian government.
Abdulmutallab, then 23, had unsuccessfully tried to detonate a bomb wired to his underwear aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam that was about to land in Detriot, Michigan with 289 people on board.
The device failed, but the terrorist became enveloped in a fireball that spread to the wall and carpeting of the plane.
Four passengers quickly restrained him and helped put out the fire, witnesses said, and he was escorted up to the first-class section of the plane and taken into custody by US authorities when it landed.
Abdulmutallab later acknowledged in a courtroom statement that he had travelled to Yemen and was “greatly inspired” to participate in such a plot by US-born militant cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in September.
