by Mohammed Bello Doka
6 June, 2026.
The same Sunday Wale Adeniran who fell on his knees to praise Governor Uba Sani for embracing a non-kinetic approach to banditry. The same Adeniran who stood on rooftops to cheer Nuhu Ribadu when the National Security Adviser began talking to bandits, negotiating with them, offering them paths to repentance. The same Adeniran who celebrated these men as wise statesmen. The same Adeniran who made a career out of abusing Nasir El-Rufai simply because El-Rufai dared to disagree with Uba Sani and Ribadu on that same non-kinetic approach.
That same Adeniran now points a trembling, accusing finger at Sheikh Ahmad Gumi and the other scholars who have been leading those very negotiations on behalf of the government. He now calls Gumi an unrepentant terrorist sympathizer. He now says Gumi should never be invited to any religious event in the South West. He now demands that we remove the religious scale from our eyes. What scale? The scale that allows him to see virtue in Uba Sani’s negotiations but evil in Gumi’s? The scale that permits Ribadu to speak with bandits but condemns a northern cleric for the same crime? The scale that makes El-Rufai a villain for opposing these men but makes Gumi a terrorist sympathizer for agreeing with them and doing the dirty work? If this is not a masterclass in hypocrisy, what is? If this is not the very definition of data boyism—selective outrage dressed in moral superiority—then the English language has lost all meaning.
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, along with other respected Islamic scholars, has for years engaged in negotiations with bandits. These engagements were conducted with the full knowledge, approval, and accompaniment of Nigerian security authorities. Gumi has repeatedly stated that he never visited any bandit camp without police escort. The Kaduna State Commissioner of Police accompanied him to a January 2021 meeting with over six hundred bandits. These negotiations are not led by Gumi alone. He is part of a broader effort involving multiple scholars called upon by state governments and security agencies to serve as intermediaries. If Gumi and these scholars are unrepentant terrorist sympathizers, what does that make Uba Sani? What does that make Ribadu? What does that make Tinubu and the government officials who approved their trips, provided their security, and sat beside them as they spoke with outlaws?
Two possibilities exist. Both are damning. First, Adeniran is unaware that Gumi’s negotiations had government approval and that other scholars were involved. If this is the case, he is daft. How can anyone with access to open records not know that Gumi traveled with police escorts? How can anyone ignore that Gumi has no authority to grant bandits anything? A negotiator carries messages. He does not sign agreements. If Adeniran is this uninformed, he has no business lecturing anyone on terrorism. He should apologize for his recklessness and continue lectures with regards to data boyism that he knows best.
Second, and far more likely, Adeniran knows the truth but chooses to proceed with his ethnic profiling and hypocritical attacks. He knows Gumi was a messenger, not a decision-maker. Yet he vilifies the visible target while protecting the invisible one. This is not ignorance. This is cowardice. This is a man who built a career abusing El-Rufai for questioning Tinubu, Uba Sani and Ribadu, but now abuses Gumi for agreeing with them and doing the work they publicly supported and funded.
Aristotle said the worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. Adeniran has done exactly this. He has taken a government-backed mediation effort led by Gumi and other scholars and framed it as the private sympathies of a single Muslim. Where is his outrage against Uba Sani? Where are his posts attacking Ribadu? Where is his condemnation of the police commissioners who escorted Gumi? There is silence. Only thunder against Gumi. He abused El-Rufai for standing against these men. He now abuses Gumi for standing with them. The only constant is his bottomless appetite for outrage.
This is ethnic jingoism. Adeniran does not truly care about banditry. If he did, he would be equally furious at every government official who negotiated with criminals and those still negotiating with the same bandits in Oyo state and other parts of the South West. But he is not. He is fixated on Gumi because Gumi is northern, because Gumi is Muslim, and because attacking him costs nothing. Attacking Uba Sani would cost him access. Attacking Ribadu would cost him relevance, attacking Tinubu will cost him his livelihood. So he punches down at a cleric while kissing up to the powerful.
Nietzsche warned that whoever fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster. Adeniran has become the very thing he claims to oppose. He accuses Gumi of sympathy for bandits, yet he sympathizes with a government that armed, supported, and negotiated with those same bandits through Gumi and other scholars. He holds Gumi to a standard he refuses to apply to anyone else.
Adeniran writes that Gumi ought not to have been invited to any religious event in the South West. This language is a dog whistle. The goal is to paint a northern Muslim as irredeemably evil while pretending that the southern Muslim officials who enabled the same process are blameless.
John Stuart Mill argued that bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. Adeniran is not a good man looking on. He is deliberately collapsing the distinction between a negotiator and a sympathizer because that collapse serves his tribal narrative.
We call on Adeniran to answer a simple question. Was Gumi acting with government approval or not? Were other scholars involved or not? If yes, your attacks are not on Gumi alone. They are on Uba Sani, Ribadu, the security chiefs, Tinubu, and the government you claim to support. If no, you are willfully ignorant. Choose one. Either you are a hypocrite who protects the powerful while punishing the powerless, or you are a fool who speaks without knowledge. There is no third option.
Until Adeniran provides an answer, his posts should be treated as the rantings of a man who sees the truth, knows the truth, hears the truth, and chooses to paddle lies, double standards, and outright hatred. He has removed the religious scale from his eyes only to replace it with ethnic jingoism. That is not clarity. That is a different kind of blindness.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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