Brigadier Gumi blames northern Nigeria for not doing enough against Boko Haram

FORMER army director Brigadier Abdulqadir Abubakar Gumi has challenged Nigeria's northern Muslims to do a lot more to confront Boko Haram as the government cannot be expected to deal with the situation alone.

 

Brigadier Gumi, the former director of legal services of the Nigerian Army and a son of the late Grand Khadi of northern Nigeria Sheik Abubakar Gumi, is also the brother of Kaduna-based Islamic scholar Sheikh Mahmud Gumi. He noted that apart from the ongoing efforts by the federal government, the Muslim community in the country had the obligation to complement the fight against the insurgents.

 

In a position paper titled How To Break Boko Haram II, Brigadier Gumi noted that besides the roles being played the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government, the north and the Muslim community must brace up to the situation. This, he said, is informed by the fact that Muslims were hitherto designated as the main complainants/victims of the insurgency and by extension, the entire northern Nigeria which formed the battleground.

 

Brigadier Gumi faulted the situation whereby the war against the insurgents was left for the federal government to contend with. He added that it was erroneous for the northern establishment to rely fully on the government or the National Assembly for all initiatives needed to prosecute the Boko Haram insurgency.

 

“The north should bear in mind that no federal body is structured to either project the north, faith, regional-based entity or targeted situations. The north, being directly devastated by the insurgency as ground zero, needs to design its peculiar defence mechanisms common or suitable to its heritage.

 

“This would fill in survival gaps or at the least improve its disposition as to compel the constituted federal structure to be alive to its responsibilities whenever its social fabrics are threatened. The attitude to wait for an election year before action would amount to accepting the kind of casualties and losses realised within the period for the democracy we have chosen for ourselves," Brigadier Gumi added.

 

He pointed out that the law expects every victim, complainant, native, domicile or citizen to defend himself through complaints and preserving records, as well as sustaining cooperation with those assigned with the responsibility to secure citizens as a public duty.  “Apathy and total reliance on government structures for all obligations, checks and balances turn silly a critique as to deserve no ears of a serious responder. 

 

"The law itself, after all, does not rise up to the indolent. It behoves on the cloaked one, the waiting to be fed, the victim, every Muslim, groups of Muslims and Christians of the north who insist that the situation must change, to come out and isolate himself/themselves from the violent ideology that sets itself on war path with fellow countrymen,” brigadier Gumi added.