Former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Prof. Usman Yusuf has revealed how former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Sheik Ahmad Gumi and himself spearheaded the negotiation that led to the release of the 27 abducted students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna State.
Yusuf made the disclosure on Tuesday as a guest on an Arise TV programme.
The Professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation disclosed that the students’ release was negotiated without payment of ransom.
He noted that the group successfully negotiated the release where the Federal Government failed.
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“The first and only negotiations that Sheik Gumi and Obasanjo got involved in, Obasanjo was emphatic that no ransom will be paid and we succeeded in doing that where the government failed. No money exchanged hands in the negotiations, no shot was fired and no life was lost. We did the negotiations and got to get these students released.
“This is what our rural folks have been passing through for years now, negotiating to get their folks out, selling whatever they have, thanks to the inefficiency of our government. If anyone’s loved one is taken, he will do whatever it takes to get the person out. That is what we have been going through for years, but it is making the news now because it is getting closer to the cities,” Prof Yusuf said.
He said that the bandits have indicated interest in embracing genuine peace and have shown over the course of several meetings that they were willing to listen to religious leaders.
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The don said military solution would not resolve the issue of banditry, which he described as a social issue.
“This is what we find out, in all the five states we went in, they listen to clerics. In Niger State, they gathered in force to a meeting of war commanders, from six states, in the forest. There’s a role for the military in all of these. Without the military, the North West would have been overrun by Boko Haram, the North Central will be overrun by these bandits, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) will overrun the South East, there will be warlords all-over South West.
“There’s a role for the military but if anybody tells you there’s a military solution to this conflict, he’s either dishonest or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There’s no military solution to this problem. Banditry is a social problem and not a military one. We are increasingly militarising what is essentially a social problem. We are dropping a million-dollar bomb on people we should be providing water for,” Prof Yusuf further stated.