Gumi emerged as a vocal leader during the colonial era, where he felt the practice of indirect rule had weakened the religious power of Emirs and encouraged westernization.

He used the sessions to revive his criticism of established authorities based on his views of a back to the source approach or the need to embrace a puritanical practice of Islam.

He has a large number of children, however his most popular child happens to be Dr Ahmad Abubakar Gumi who succeeded his father as the scholar of the central mosque Kaduna (Sultan Bello), Dr Ahmad Gumi is a certified medical doctor from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and was a former military officer, he left the military and travel to study fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) at the umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia where he obtained his PhD.

Gumi is a follower of the Maliki school of thought, this was derived through his writings including his Qur'anic tafsir (Raddul azhaan ila ma'anil Qur'an) Gumi was born in the village of Gummi (now a local government area in Zamfara state) on the last Friday of Ramadan in the Islamic year 1344, to the family of Mahmud, an Islamic scholar and Alkali (judge) of Gummi.

There he became acquainted with Shehu Shagari, Waziri Muhammadu Junaidu, and Yahaya Gusau; the latter was a co-founder of Jama'atu Nasril Islam, a prominent Nigerian Muslim organization.

[2] In 1947 Abubakar Gumi left his job as secretary to Qadi Attahiru and went to teach at the Kano Law School, which he had previously attended.

Aminu and Gumi mingled and shared views on the influence of the traditional society with the Islamic faith, and also the indifference or support given to the situation of Bida or syncretism by the Sufi brotherhoods.

He also met and befriended many members of the Ummah or Muslim community in Saudi Arabia, many of whom later became his benefactors after the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966.

He felt the new administration had the political power to curtail his views, and in the process, he resorted to consulting his friends in Saudi Arabia for moral, dogmatic and financial support to promote a Wahabbist interpretation of Islam centering on the rejection of mysticism, return to puritanical Islamic teaching, and rejection of the then dominant Sufi brotherhoods.

By the early 1970s, he wished to contest what he felt was the hijacking of major Islamic political organizations by the Fityan al-Islam, an organization founded in Kano by Mudi Salga, a leader of the Salgawa network, who was opposed to some of the policies of the late Ahmadu Bello and his Jamaat Nasr al-Islam (the Association for the Support of Islam).

He decided to start a movement and relied on his old students to spread his views on Islamic dogma,[8] prodding many to take jobs at the JNI and enter into legislative duties.

He used one of his students, Sheikh Ismaila Idris Ibn Zakariyya, as a founder for the new movement to challenge the Sufi brotherhoods and ensure a return of Islam to a fundamental way.

Many within the political cycles and Sufi Brotherhoods of Northern Nigeria held that Gumi was the principal who drove a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in Northern Nigeria; that his interpretations of the Hadith and Qur'an were based on his own personal views and not the Sunnah; and that he was monopolizing the mass media for his personal views.

[2] Abubakar Gumi who was referred to as the father of Izala as he usually mentioned during his Islamic teaching process, succeeded in overwhelming the establishment of the 1970s organisation by name Izalatul Bidi'ah wa Iqamatussunah co-founded by one of his prominent student whom Gumi tutor in his previous job as a school teacher at School of Arabic Studies (SAS) in Kano, though he also maintain his membership in Jama'atu Nasrul Islam (JNI) which favour him to proceed in his Islamic teachings at Kaduna central mosque handed by the above-mentioned organisation, JNI.