By Ishola Adeleke and Okereke Udoakpuenyi, YeyeNews.com, October 13, 2021
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi is still in shock over the decision of the Nobel Committee to look over him and award the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, according to his aide Mallam Shehu. The Committee announced the winners of the prize on Wednesday in Sweden.
“Gumi does not believe that the winners have done much in promotion of world peace to deserve the award. He wonders how people that sit behind their computers to criticize governments can be deemed to have promoted peace more than someone who is risking his life to go into the lair of armed bandits to negotiate the release of kidnapped school children and convince the bandits to accept an amnesty from the government”, Mallam Sule expressed to YeyeNews.com.
YeyeNews.com reported how Sheikh Gumi had being a strong advocate of the need for government to negotiate with the bandits arguing that the bandits are victims of neglect by successive leaders at different levels of government.
A professor of International Relations at University of Lagos told YeyeNews.com that the Nobel Prize Committee “does not need anybody’s permission to award any one” and should not engage in defending their choice of Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov insisting that their works have helped in exposing oppressive and dictatorial governments around the world. “The Nobel Committee does not recognize advocating for forgiveness of terrorists as an aspect of peace building. Anybody that desires to win this prize must be seen to be fighting on the side of the people and not on the side of those who murder and abduct them”, the professor said in apparent reference to Sheikh Gumi.
Another source close to Sheikh Ahmad Gumi had told YeyeNews.com reporter that the Sheikh will not be deterred by this failure of the Nobel Committee to appreciate and recognize the enormity of his sacrifices. “He will continue to advocate for the rights and interests of these boys in the forests. They deserve to have a normal life in towns and cities like every order person. Whether anybody awards him the prize or not doesn’t matter to him for now.”
