Controversial Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has alleged that security sources in Abuja secretly informed him that his name was listed among individuals marked for elimination as part of the Boko Haram terror group.
The cleric made the claim while addressing his congregation, saying he received an early-morning phone call from a senior security source who declined to be named. According to Gumi who spoke in Hausa as captured in a trending video, the caller told him his name had come up during a national security meeting.
“They called me from Abuja that there was a security meeting,” Gumi said. “They said I have been marked; that I will be eliminated. And who are Boko Haram?”
He claimed the caller told him that his name was among those allegedly pencilled down for assassination, suggesting that the designation was linked to foreign counterterrorism narratives.
“Even the Americans, they say they came to fight terrorists. So who are the terrorists? They are the ones,” he said, blaming the United States for the emergence and persistence of Boko Haram insurgents.
In the widely circulated video clip on social media, Gumi alleged that a top official informed him he was among those supposedly marked by the United States for elimination through an American airstrike, allegedly as part of Boko Haram.
“They are the ones doing it – Boko Haram. You will hear something. Won’t they put bomb here?” he added, speaking rhetorically.
The cleric further accused the United States, under President Donald Trump, of worsening Nigeria’s insecurity and social divisions through what he described as destructive policies, lies and foreign-backed narratives. He claimed Nigerian leaders and clerics had retreated into silence as the country slid deeper into crisis.
According to him, Nigeria had become more fractured due to foreign-backed money and narratives that oppressed citizens and falsely portrayed Christians as the sole victims of insecurity, thereby fuelling religious tension and mutual suspicion.
“Because of lies, you brought violence. But where are the leaders? What did they do?” Gumi asked. “What about the scholars? Where are they? Everyone has gone to hide in their corners.”
He argued that no sovereign country would accept external interference aimed at dividing its people along religious or social lines.
“Which country would agree to bring something in just to divide its people?” he said. “There is no country that would accept that. It would say either you bring all of us together, or you hold us and hand us over to them.”
Gumi accused political and religious elites of abandoning meaningful dialogue, saying Nigerians were left with “noise” rather than solutions, while hardship, oppression and denial of rights continued to spread.
“You brought us hardship, you broke us. You oppressed us, you denied us our rights,” he said, lamenting what he described as the labeling of parts of Nigeria along religious lines.
He warned that fear, silence and deepening divisions were dragging the country down, stressing that continued inaction by leaders and clerics would only worsen Nigeria’s crises.
“This is the kind of situation we are in,” Gumi said. “It is dragging the country down
