Late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi
When Tell Magazine published its September 28, 1992, report on the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, it captured a portrait of a man whose brilliance, influence and turbulence shaped the religious and political currents of Northern Nigeria.
EKO HOT BLOG reports that more than three decades later, the same descriptions — admiration, fear, controversy and moral absolutism — are being used for his son, Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, the Islamic scholar who has become the most polarising religious figure in Nigeria’s battle against banditry.
The similarities are striking: two generations of clerics whose interventions in national crises provoke as much discomfort as they inspire devotion.
Abubakar Gumi, who died on September 11, 1992, was by the early 1990s already one of the most consequential Islamic scholars Nigeria had ever produced.
In its obituary, Tell Magazine called him Nigeria’s “Ayatollah” — a label that underscored both his towering religious authority and the fear that surrounded his doctrinal rigidity. He had translated the Qur’an from Arabic to Hausa, won the King Faisal International Award, served on major Islamic bodies, and advised governments at home and abroad.
Yet his prestige came wrapped in controversy. His critics accused him of stirring sectarian tensions and inciting confrontations that shaped the combustible relationship between Christians and Muslims in the North.
Even Gumi himself appeared to acknowledge that he had a reputation for “relishing controversies and violence,” as in his latter years, he became worried about his public image and worked to soften his rhetoric and conduct.
The Kaduna religious uprising of 1987 cemented his notoriety in some ways. The Babangida regime described the crisis as the “civilian equivalent of a military coup,” and although Gumi was not directly implicated in the violence, public perception tied the radicalism of young militants to his fiery sermons.
Tell Magazine reported that the cleric became increasingly troubled by how his image had been weaponised; he tried to distance himself from extremist elements “who found inspirations from Iran and Libya.”
In his last years, he shifted towards peace advocacy and inter-religious restraint, warning Muslims and Christians alike that “we are going to ruin ourselves” if violence remained the language of faith.
Yet even this softened tone could not erase the fear he inspired among those who believed his followers, if unchecked, might become “the scourge of society they are seeking to purify.”
It is within this historical shadow that Ahmad Gumi — one of his father’s 32 children — has emerged as an equally compelling and divisive national figure. Like his father, the younger Gumi is a scholar and a preacher who has stepped into Nigeria’s most dangerous dilemmas. And like his father, he has found himself engulfed by controversy, accused of enabling the very forces he claims to be taming.
Ahmad Gumi
For the past several years, the younger Gumi has positioned himself as an intermediary between the Nigerian state and the armed bandit groups terrorising the North-West and parts of the North Central. He has trekked into forest hideouts, met gang leaders, negotiated hostage releases and advocated amnesty, rehabilitation and dialogue rather than military confrontation.
To his supporters, he is a humanitarian attempting to save lives in a system that has failed to deliver security. To his critics, he is a dangerous appeaser who legitimises mass murderers and kidnappers.
His most contentious statements — suggesting that bandits are “victims of neglect,” calling kidnapping a “lesser evil,” or accusing military forces of aggravating the crisis — have drawn intense backlash from security experts, government officials and victims’ families. Some activists have even called for his prosecution, accusing him of providing ideological cover for armed groups.
Although the cleric insists that negotiating with criminals is the only practical path toward peace, many Nigerians view his approach as the moral equivalent of rewarding terror.
These criticisms echo those once directed at his father.
Abubakar Gumi, too, was accused of enabling radical behaviour among his followers. He, too, was misunderstood, according to his inner circle, who argued that he was a man of peace misrepresented by sensational reactions to his words.
His deputy, Sheikh Zakariyya Yauwale, told Tell in 1992 that Gumi was a “simple man greatly misunderstood” — a description that mirrors how Ahmad Gumi’s supporters defend him today.
Both father and son have occupied a rare space in Nigerian public life: religious scholars who step beyond the pulpit into the volatile terrain of national security, politics and identity. Both have become the subject of fierce national debates, depicted alternatively as peacemakers, provocateurs, intellectuals, radicals and misunderstood reformers. Their critics believe their rhetoric emboldens extremists; their followers believe their boldness speaks truth to failing leadership.
Gumi’s father spent his last years trying to calm the very tensions his interventions had helped intensify. Ahmad Gumi today finds himself caught in a similar cycle, defending his attempt at conflict resolution while battling a public perception shaped by suspicion, fear and the memory of his father’s polarising legacy.
In many ways, the Tell Magazine headline from 1992 feels prophetic. Nigeria’s “Ayatollah” may be gone, but the controversies he generated continue to echo through the work of the son who, knowingly or not, has stepped into his old role: a cleric navigating the line between influence and provocation, revered by many, mistrusted by many more. Like father, like son.