Sheik Gumi: My Name Is Among Those Listed To Be Attacked By Terrorists

caption: Sheikh Ahmad Gumi

Saudi Arabia-based Nigerian Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, may have been listed for attack by “terrorists.”

According to one of his relatives who did not want to be identified, in the early hours of Tuesday Gumi received a call from a top security official who advised him to be security conscious as his name prominently featured in the list of those that may be attacked.

The source said it was after that warning that a bomb blast occurred a few meters from the home of their patriarch (late Sheik Abubakar Mahmud Gumi) on Modibbo Adama Road, where the younger Gumi is also residing.

The source said, “This morning our brother received a [ phone call] advising him to be security conscious, because some terrorists are planning to attack him for reasons best known to them, he started praying for his protection and suddenly this attack. Our brother was home when the explosion occurred at the tail end of our street. We heard it and after some time he followed another route and drove straight to Sultan Bello Mosque for sermon (Tafsir).”

SaharaReporters also heard audio directly from Sheik Gumi confirming what his relative told us.  In it, Gumi said, “As I am just coming now after a long silence of these unnecessary explosions and bombings, we heard an explosion very close to our house. And in the morning today from a senior military security that they have a list of people that were targeted for a terrorist attack and that I am among them.  Now the question is the high cadre of our military intelligence know that we are target, and yet this morning I was told and there was a bomb explosion we never heard near our house just by the corner of the main road. So what I am saying is to emphasise that we have serious insecurity problem.”

As SaharaReporters reported exclusively recently, security has been tightened around Gumi.  In view of Tuesday’s attack, however, a security source says that those arrangements are being seriously reviewed, and that more security has been added to the fold of protecting the cleric and his household.

Their patriarch, late Sheik Abubakar Gumi, a former Grand Khadi of Northern Nigeria, died in a London hospital on Friday 14 Rabi’ul Auwal, 1413, that is, 11 September 1992, according to the Gregorian Calendar.

It is unclear, as we go to press, how Nigerian security operatives obtained the list upon which someone tipped off the Islamic scholar, who else is on that list, and whether such people have also been warned.