Last week’s trip to Igboho, Oyo State by Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gunmi was a vexatious misadventure, the Yoruba Leadership and Peace Initiative (TYLPI) has said.
Gumi, accompanied by the former Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Usman Yusuf, was said to have arrived in the town, the adopted home of the incarcerated Yoruba self-determination activist, Mr. Sunday Igboho, and held meetings with some community leaders.
In a statement signed by its Director of Publicity, Mr. Tunde Ipinmisho, the Yoruba group said Gumi’s self-assigned role of mediator in the security crisis in the North western parts of Nigeria was suspect and had not yielded any tangible outcome.
The group said nothing was heard from Gumi, by way of open condemnation of the savage murder of scores of the people of Igangan, Oyo State by so called gunmen, for doing nothing other than to proclaim the ownership of their ancestral land.
It said it was the carnage that made the incarcerated Igboho rise in defence of the hapless people of the troubled community and other parts of Yorubaland.
“By his visit to Igboho town, Gunmi has exposed himself as a busybody who would exploit any situation to draw public attention to himself and his ignoble mission,” TYLPI said in the statement.
The group said any attempt by the likes of Gumi to hide behind the cloak of religion to divide the Yoruba or deny the well known acts of terrorism by Fulani herdsmen in parts of Yorubaland would fail.
It expressed surprise that the likes of Gumi who had been openly fraternising with terrorists and criminal gangs in the Northern parts of the country were walking freely around while innocent persons in other parts of the country were being hounded to jail for offences that were largely unknown to the nation’s laws.
“While the Yoruba are by nature welcoming and accommodating to visitors, those like Gumi coming with sinister agenda, should desist from making such forays into places where people have been traumatised.”
