Renowned Kaduna-based Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has stated that the war against banditry in the North-West would have been largely won if credible Islamic clerics had been heavily deployed to reform the criminals through preaching.

Gumi, who made the assertion via his official Facebook page on Wednesday, noted that a non-kinetic approach rooted in religious re-education would drastically reduce the nation`s reliance on military force.

He urged Nigerians to look beyond the violence to understand the root causes of the crisis, identifying ignorance, poverty, and social neglect as the primary drivers turning locals into bandits.

He noted that an organized, large-scale preaching campaign spanning the last six years could have fundamentally altered the security landscape by teaching the bandits Islamic laws regarding the sanctity of life and property.

"The aim is to teach the bandits the sanctity of human life, the inviolability of people’s property, and the Islamic prohibition of killing and oppression. People are the victims of their own prejudice,” Gumi stated.