Arrest ‘bandits leader’ Gumi, PFN tells Buhari

• Martins urges FG to deploy all resources against security threats
• COAS insists on non-kinetic approach to combat criminality
• Ortom assents to amended Community Volunteer Guards law

The South West Zone of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to arrest Sheikh Ahmad Gumi over his utterances, especially for saying that the Federal Government should not declare the bandits as terrorists.

PFN said he should be the number one suspect, especially with his romance with the bandits.

The Christian body disclosed this yesterday in Lagos after a conference attended by its chapters from the six South West states.

Speaking through its leader, Archbishop John Osa-Oni, PFN said Gumi’s utterances were questionable and as such the Federal Government should hold him responsible.

PFN argued that had Gumi been a Christian leader, he would have been arrested.

On his part, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos Metropolitan See, Dr. Alfred Martins, has urged the Federal Government to harness all available resources to tackle insecurity facing the country.

The bishop made the call, yesterday, during the Nigeria Catholic Diocesan Priests’ Association (NCDPA) 2021 yearly general meeting, at St. Leo Catholic Church, Ikeja, Lagos.

Martins told newsmen at the event that the country’s problems were enormous and were mostly due to the inability of leaders to harness available resources for the country’s good.

He blamed politicians for using religion as a tool to divide Nigerians and allow insecurity to thrive.

But Chief of Army Staff, Maj-Gen. Farouk Yahaya, has said that non-kinetic approach is very essential in combating insurgency, banditry and other criminal activities in the country.

Speaking yesterday at the symposium organised by the Centre for Security and Legal Studies University of Abuja, Yahaya noted various forms of insecurity in parts of the country as Boko Haram in the North East, banditry in the North West and North Central, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) agitations in the South East, illegal oil bunkering in the Niger Delta and others.

To achieve the mandate of his office, the Nigerian army has been engaged in various joint operations, he added.

In Benue State, Governor Samuel Ortom has signed into law the amended Community Volunteer Guards Law enacted in 2020 to help conventional security agencies tame insecurity in the state.

Ortom, while signing the amended law on Tuesday, in Makurdi, said, under the new law, a command structure would be set up.

According to him, the new law will allow the personnel to carry light weapons permissible by law.

The governor stated that 20 years after, the vigilante law needed to be amended, maintaining that it became imperative to complement the conventional security agencies to fight criminality, especially in the rural areas.

(Culled from The Guardian)