The Islamic Movement of Nigeria
(IMN) has faulted a statement credited to the Attorney-General of the
Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) that the fate
of its leader, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his wife, lies in the hands of the
Kaduna State Government and its governor, Nasir El-Rufai.
The movement insists that rather,
the Federal Government is complicit in the continuous detention of the IMN
leader.
In a statement issued on Sunday,
the group’s Spokesman, Ibrahim Musa, said it is not, therefore, possible, under
any logical reasoning, to exonerate the President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal
government from the “continued contemptuous detention of Sheikh Zakzaky and his
wife”.
The group also alleged that the
Federal Government mischievously concocted a case in Kaduna, three years after
the illegal detention of the IMN leader and his wife, accusing them of aiding
and abetting homicide before the Kaduna State high court.
According to the statement, the
case against Sheikh Zakzaky is, therefore, only a mischievous attempt at
keeping the revered leader in perpetual illegal detention.
The group, however, called on the
Buhari Government to “stop deceiving the public by trying to paint itself a
saint and simply obey the court judgment to free the revered sheikh and stop
further false and fake cases with the deliberate intention of keeping him in
detention”.
The Statement Reads In Part:
“Firstly, the Federal
Government’s criminal complicity in the heinous genocide in Zaria of December,
2015 that led to the extrajudicial murder of over a thousand members of the
Islamic Movement in Nigeria and the subsequent arrest and detention of the
sheikh is beyond doubt.
This much was accepted and
testified to by the general himself in an interview he granted a Qatari
television channel while on a visit there as early as March 2016.
The Saudi crown prince’s
self-confessions during a visit to the us that the brutal and inhuman
suppression and the continuing illegal detention of sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky was
part of his major foreign policy achievements further confirm the Federal
Government’s involvement, as foreign policy issues are in the exclusive list of
the federal government.
Was that not why the Saudi King
was the first to call the general Buhari in December 2015, soon after the Zaria
genocide, to congratulate him for what he called a victory against terrorism?
Was that not also why general Buhari wanted to smuggle Nigeria into a Saudi-led
military alliance at the time in the name of fighting terrorism? Was not the
then Nigerian Defense Minister, Mansur Dan Ali accorded honor by the Saudi
authorities on behalf of the federal government for the role the Nigerian
military, an agent of the federal government, played?”
Secondly, the attacks, arrest and
subsequent detention of sheikh Zakzaky were by federal government agencies. For
the past four years, the department of state security (DSS) took custody of the
sheikh and his wife from the army. Nobody is granted access to see him except
with the express permission of these federal agents. It even had to take the
involvement of the AGF for anyone; even the Kaduna State established judicial
commission of inquiry at the time, to access sheikh Zakzaky.
Furthermore, when the federal
high court declared the detention of the sheikh and his spouse illegal and
unconstitutional and ordered their immediate release from custody forthwith,
the order was against the DSS, Nigeria police force and the AGF, all
representing the federal government.
The Kaduna State government was
never a party in any of these matters. Who is the AGF now fooling that it is
purely Kaduna State affair?
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