Ahmad Gumi, a prominent Islamic cleric, says herdsmen had to take up arms to defend themselves against brutality, since the government neglected them.
The cleric had described bandits as , who are only interested in their cows.
Speaking when he featured on Politics on Sunday, a programme on TVC, he also blamed Nigerians for contributing to insecurity.
Gumi was responding to a question on whether political leaders could be blamed for refusing to address the complaints of bandits about extrajudicial killings by law enforcement agents, as witnessed during the #EndSARS protests, which kicked against police harassment.
“I blame everybody, from the President to you, the man speaking. I blame everybody. It is a combination of small, small issues here and there that produced this monster. Everybody is at fault. I don’t want any Nigerian to exonerate himself,” Gumi said.
“The media plays a part by polarising the nation. Even journalists helped in stirring this ethnic chauvinism we see all over the country. Government has neglected these people all along and they were using a hammer to kill a fly.
“To the southern Nigerians, #EndSARS is not a reason to understand why these herdsmen took up weapons. They were brutalised by the military, not only the police, for a lot of time, and not only in this regime. We should not be surprised.”
There is something I do not understand Gumi,,,they take up arms to rape women? They take up arms to kidnap road users? They take up arms to destroy farmers crops?