By Neta Nwosu
More condemnation has come the way of the Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, and Islamic scholar, Sheikh Abubakar Ahmad Gumi, over their comments on ways of resolving the security challenges, especially banditry in the country.
The latest of their critic is the Metropolitan See of the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri, Dr. Anthony Obinna, who declared that their position would further expose the country to violence and put it on a tenterhook.
The archbishop, in an interview with ThisNigeria, also spoke on a wide range of national issues, including COVID-19, controversial Water Resources Bill, the recurring conflict between farmers and herders, among other issues.
Matawalle and Gumi are among leading Nigerians that have canvassed the granting of amnesty to bandits who have been terrorising the northern part of the country.
While Gumi, who visited bandits in many of their enclaves in the north, had urged the authorities to grant them pardon, Matawalle had, in fact, granted them amnesty in Zamfara State.
Gumi, in an instance, said if government could pardon coup plotters that committed treasonable felony, there was nothing wrong extending the same gesture to bandits.
But appraising the security challenges in the country, Bishop Obinna noted that romancing and negotiating with bandits was akin to legitimising evil.
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The cleric said, “You don’t make friends with evil, you don’t legitimise evil because evil will only have more room for rampage. Evil is to be restrained, good is to be promoted. You don’t go to congratulate bandits, negotiate with them, you are legitimising evil.
“As far as I’m concerned that is not the way to go. These bandits are ruffians, who need to be educated, who need to be directed towards doing good rather than stealing or attacking people. These are people that could have been taken to school, given more discipline, and oriented towards doing some professional or vocational work that would benefit the society at large but because they have been allowed to roam around like wolves they now claim legitimacy in a nightmarish Nigeria.
“They go anywhere they want and in the process having gained a lot of money from banditry they would have love to continue it. So you are now begging criminals not to be so criminal, you rehabilitate them, they may for a while seem to be nice. But in the long run, they are kegs of gun powder left to explode whenever they feel like.
“So you cannot just legitimise people who are into evil profession. To do so is to turn the society into a society of robbers so that both the leaders and the led become reciprocal robbers”.
Proffering solution to the menace, Obinna urged the authorities to adopt a comprehensive strategy, comprising reorientation and reformation.
He added, “All of us in our different native localities were living with various levels of wild tendencies but through education, through formation in regular schools, particularly religious primary and secondary schools, we acquired more humane and refined characters.
“Tertiary education today is a bit of a wide goose chase. There isn’t much of moral formation or spiritual formation in higher institutions. That is why you also have a lot of crisis in universities and higher institutions.
It is basically in the nursery, primary and secondary level, that human beings are given the orientation of what they would do, you train the child in the way of discipline early enough, he internalises it, even if he is failing or falling, he wouldn’t fall all the way into the gutter.
“I believe that reformatory should be re-established where these bandits can be trained into more useful citizens with the military and the police if they are honest and patriotism guiding them until they are able to be responsible citizens again”.
“In the past, we used to talk about reformatory, there were reformatories in the past in Nigeria apart from prisons, created with a view to spiritual, social, mental and professional reorientation. These are the things that would help the bandits but treating them with kid gloves would only postpone the day for further rampage.”
