Armed bandits terrorising northern Nigeria feel trapped in a cycle of revenge and are afraid to lay down their weapons for fear of being killed, according to the Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, whose latest comments have reopened a bitter national argument over whether the country should negotiate with its most violent criminal gangs.
Gumi, who has for years positioned himself as a go-between for the gangs, made the remarks in an interview on the PAPShow programme published on 29 October, with clips circulating widely this week. He said one bandit he met admitted the bloodshed had become too much, but that members of the group believed they had been forced into it.
According to the cleric, the fighters trace their anger to military operations first presented as a campaign against cattle rustling but which, in their telling, left women and children dead in their communities. He described their outlook as one of attack and counterattack, a field of blood in which each side avenges the last. The duty of the clergy, he said, was to “stop the bloodshed” and draw both sides to the table.
Asked why the gangs could not simply stop, Gumi said many feared they would be hunted down if they surrendered, and that any peace effort would first have to convince them they would not be killed. He also claimed the groups were locked in an arms race, buying weapons on a thriving black market where cash is the only requirement. He went further, suggesting foreign intelligence services could have a hand in arming them and that unnamed sponsors might be involved, though he offered no evidence for either claim.
The cleric remains a polarising figure. His repeated calls for amnesty and dialogue have drawn sharp criticism from Nigerians who see them as excusing mass murder, and from analysts who argue that talking to the gangs rewards kidnapping and buys only temporary calm. His defenders counter that force alone has not ended the violence and that negotiation, handled carefully, can save lives.
The debate is complicated by the gangs’ legal status. A Federal High Court in Abuja declared bandit groups terrorists in late 2021, and the Federal Government gazetted the ruling in January 2022, bringing them under the Terrorism Prevention Act and clearing the way for the use of air power against them. That designation makes formal negotiation legally and politically fraught, even as informal contacts have continued in several states.
The scale of the problem gives the argument its urgency. Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database recorded 4,654 deaths and 3,141 abductions nationwide in 2025, with banditry the single deadliest threat at 599 incidents and 2,724 deaths, a steep rise from 256 incidents and 1,585 deaths the year before. Figures from SBM Intelligence put the number of people kidnapped between July 2025 and June 2026 at 7,825, a 66 per cent increase on the previous year, with about N7.8 billion paid in ransom and roughly 94 per cent of victims seized in the north.
The North-West has borne the heaviest toll. Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Kebbi account for much of the killing and abduction, with the Mass Atrocities Tracker counting more than 32,000 violent deaths across the country between 2021 and 2026 and over 5,600 kidnap victims in Zamfara alone. Nigeria ranked fourth on this year’s Global Terrorism Index, which recorded a 46 per cent rise in terrorism deaths in the country in 2025.
Much of the renewed alarm stems from a wave of mass school abductions. In November 2025, gunmen seized schoolgirls from Maga in Kebbi, killing the vice principal, and carried off more than 300 students and staff from St Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, among the worst such attacks since the Chibok kidnapping of 2014. The raids forced the authorities to relocate senior officials to the affected states, and sporadic abductions of students have continued into 2026.
Successive governments have swung between vowing to crush the gangs and quietly tolerating local peace deals. Security chiefs have at various points ruled out negotiation, arguing that it signals weakness and emboldens the gangs, while some state governments have struck truces that often collapse within months. For now, Gumi’s intervention has sharpened the same unresolved question that has trailed the crisis for years: whether Nigeria can fight its way out of banditry, talk its way out, or must somehow attempt both at once.