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Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi has questioned the absence of high-level government engagement with Boko Haram and bandit groups, pointing to past official visits to Niger Delta militants as a precedent that has not been applied in the north.
The Kaduna-based scholar, in a Facebook post on Saturday, recalled that both former President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo personally visited militant camps in the creeks.
Those interactions, he said, produced programmes that helped de-escalate violence in the oil-producing region.
“The former President Jonathan visited delta militants in the creeks, so also the former vice president Osinbajo. They all came up with a program to tame the militants,” he wrote.
He then asked why similar outreach has not been extended to armed groups operating in the north, and who would be willing to undertake such a mission without attracting public criticism.
“Who is going to visit BH and Bandits to tame them without fools castigating them?” he asked.
The Niger Delta amnesty programme, launched in 2009, led to the disarmament of thousands of militants in exchange for training and stipends, significantly reducing attacks on oil infrastructure.
Jonathan, who became president after Yar’Adua, sustained the initiative.
Osinbajo’s 2017 visit to the creeks as acting president was framed as an effort to engage citizens with legitimate grievances rather than simply treating them as security threats.
