By Abdulmumin Giwa
Following recent media campaign that by a group under the aegis of Save Zakzaky Life Group, which issued a two-week ultimatum and a one week reminder that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) would be occupied if the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky is not released, the IMN had distanced itself from the ultimatum saying it is not in the character of the Movement to issue threats and ultimatums.
This is contained in a press statement signed by the president of the Media Forum of the Movement Ibrahim Musa in Kaduna yesterday.
The statement said “it has become expedient to make this clarification that the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) has never employed the use of ultimatum or the issuance of threats of violence in its entire four decades of existence to anyone, group or authority”.
The statement also accused the security forces of planning to exploit the ultimatum to reign terror on the movement saying “the security forces appear to be bent on carrying out series of attacks and subsequently attribute same to the IMN at the expiration of the ultimatum so that they could achieve what they have so far failed to do, which is associate the peaceful campaigns to Free Zakzaky with violence in order to swing public opinion against the IMN and justify the December massacre”.
The IMN further distant itself from any possible breach of peace and serenity that will result from the ultimatum issued by the group. “IMN is not and will not be responsible for any breech of peace or violence that will result from any false flag plots”.
The Movement also reiterated its stance saying “We will continue to employ all lawful, legal and constitutional means to achieve our goals and would not be blackmailed into submission or surrender. Our timely rallies, processions and campaign activities will continue as at when due and in our ways without fear of intimidation.”
“We will also continue to seek redress inn national and international courts of justice as we have done in the past nine months” the statement added.
The statement finally called for the immediate and unconditional release of the IMN leader who has been in detention without trial since the December pogrom.
Month: September 2016
Quotes from: How Galant
By Abdulmumin Giwa
“We in Nigeria have grown to know that the mentality of the uniformed personnel especially the Nigerian Army is that of a superior citizen to other Nigerians. He could do anything extra-judicial and go away with it simply because he is wearing the army uniform. He could molest and harass a citizen, trample upon his fundamental rights and even crudely torture him in the name of punishing him for offending him.
“It is with this same military mentality that the Nigerian President is ruling the country. They even arrogantly and egocentrically describe other citizens as ‘bloody civilians’. Imagine this terrible and uncivilized mentality. A unit of the society that generates virtually zero income to the country whose job is to be paid by tax payers to protect the territorial boundaries of the country turning out to be killing innocent unarmed civilians. It is only in Nigeria that this incivility can take place unchallenged. It is also only in Nigeria that you find the military doing police work.
“These Army brutalities have gone along way creating resentments and hatred for them in the larger society in such a way that arrogance, suppression, inhumanity and terrorism have turned out to be the new definition they have given to gallantry of the Army. With this kind of new concept of gallantry one would not need to be told that the country is heading towards a doom as things are moving from bad to worse and from worse to…..? Somebody said hell. Funny, soldiers fighting unarmed civilians, how gallant.”
–Abdulmumin Giwa
Nigerian government and the many lives of Shekau
By Abdulmumin Giwa
It is becoming more and more glaring to the world that terrorism is a tool in the hands of global imperialism used as weapon of flag up operations to achieve political, social, economic and even diplomatic goals.
Definitely, there is no place you will find a conventional terrorist organization operating and terrorizing humanity that you will see or hear America, Israel or Saudi Arabia featuring in one way or the other.
The terrorist organizations receive technical and terror guidance from America and Israel while they receive funds and ideological guidance from Saudi Arabia.
Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare used in instilling fear and insecurity as well as dispersing and destabilizing people and communities. It is with the use of terrorism that nations relegate their security strength to the control of the imperialists who use it to control the victim states.
In Nigeria, it is not any different as even the government is meant to play a role in the whole saga and those in charge of security votes have their field days looting public coffers in the name of fighting terrorism. Many billionaires have been produced as a result from the political and military classes among Nigerians.
They deceive the public by making them believe that a terror group exists that is striving to establish the Islamic government. The only thing that is heard of such terror group is bombing of Churches, Mosques, Market places, schools and other public places. They abduct people and attack villages and set them ablaze thereby blackmailing and miss-presenting Islam as a religion of terror.
They don’t preach religion or build schools and religious centers and they don’t also engage in promoting moral teachings or any missionary activities. They don’t have any known contact addresses news media or public activities. It is such that the only identity they have is sorrow, tears and blood they leave behind wherever they visit. Definitely nothing of these signifies religion or godliness.
Yet, they have access to millions of dollars and naira they spend on sophisticated weapons and ammunitions. They are said to be living in the bush and only appear in towns at terror times to kill and maim innocent unarmed citizens. They abduct and enslave women all in the name of ‘God’s’ religion.
Not even the demonic posture used in castigating Islam of being spread by the sword do they depict, theirs is simply a game of terror that depicts Islam in bad light and not calling anybody to Islam.
Definitely nobody is ignorant of the fact that the sole beneficiaries of terrorism are the direct opponents of Islam and not Islam. They believe they can terrorize people in the name of Islam and exploit their ignorance of Islam to push them away from embracing it. Why they do this is because they see the rise of the Islamic system as a threat to their system. If you want to kill a dog you just give it a bad name.
In the Nigerian terror drama, the Boko Haram was founded and in various ways it had served interests that clearly show that it is the government that is the Boko Haram. More so, one of the reasons why the Boko Haram was created was to be used in fighting the IMN and it course.
There are a lot of ways to understand that the Boko Haram is a tool in the hands of the imperialists as well. The IMN is a threat to the interest of the imperialists most especially as they are not willing to lose an oil-rich and largest black nation to the Islamic system and opponent, Iran. And here is the IMN influencing millions of people towards that, preaching true freedom and emancipation from their grip.
Part of the plots to eradicate what they term as the fast growing Iranian influence in Nigeria was to introduce a terror machine and activity to possibly dilute or counter the IMN. The Boko Harm was then founded to be nurtured by its cabal within the Nigerian state.
To elaborate on this issue, it would be seen that for several reasons, the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration would have succeeded itself until the imperialists were sure that General Muhammadu Buhari would be even a better puppet than Jonahan.
Before then, efforts were made to disrupt the electioneering process and get everything to be suspended to extend the rule of Jonathan before ways that would make him continue in power were devised.
Let me give some examples, the Boko Haram was very handy and it was used in attacking Sheikh Dahiru Uthman Bauchi in Kaduna before the elections season judging by his widespread followership that could destabilize the country and suspend the elections. Hundreds of the Tarika followers were butchered on that fateful day.
On the same day also the blind support being enjoyed by General Buhari was also exploited using Boko Haram with the intention of getting him assassinated and creating mayhem that would possibly halt the elections and allow Jonathan to continue in power. That also failed as General Buhari escaped the attempt.
When the two attempts failed, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria was then attacked on the Quds Day and 34 members of the IMN were killed including three biological sons of the leader who were abducted and tortured to death. They did this with intention that the IMN would react wildly and help them destabilize the country which they would use as a good reason to halt the elections but it didn’t work either.
Being fully aware of the drama the revered leader of the IMN, His Eminence Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, called for calm among the members and declared that the group will not allow itself to be used in shedding innocent bloods in the country.
It didn’t stop there, they threatened and also attacked the IMN during the annual Arba’een trekking to Zaria with the hope that they instigate the IMN into mob action but the plot failed and some supposedly secrete information leaked.
The Jonathan government later used the intensified Boko Haram attacks on communities in North East to reschedule elections moving the commencement date ahead by six weeks to allow troops suppress Boko Haram for elections to hold in serenity. They used this period to go back to the drawing board to see how Jonathan could continue in power.
It is even with the name of fighting Boko Haram that they squeezed out billions of naira from government coffers to bribe political, religious, traditional as well as business influences across the country. This is talking about one of the multi-functional roles of Boko Haram.
Even during the elections the Boko Haram terror managers didn’t want to lose power and they used the Boko Haram to threaten voters not to vote for General Buhari in some parts of the North East. During this campaign they entered the towns throwing press releases carrying their message of threats for voting Buhari.
There are several things that have happened that proved how Boko Haram had benefited the past regime and is still benefiting the present regime.
All the major attempts as mentioned above failed and it was clear to the imperialists and the Jonathan administration that Jonathan was going to lose the elections and would be difficult to impose him if he loses as it will destabilize some of their projects and plots in the country.
So they took the option of signing in Buhari as the next anointed stooge to rule Nigeria which was clear with the visit of the American Secretary of State John Kerry, General Buhari’s visit to the US and the Chatham House and other global publicity he got from the imperialists.
Nigerians should have asked why and how Jonathan could have congratulated General Buhari for winning the elections even before the results were announced. Majority were carried away by the blind support for Buhari and the belief that the electronic voter card played wonders. Jonathan could have been imposed as president but the resultant circumstances for that action would create a new scenario the imperialists have not planned for. So they opted for Buhari and instructed Jonathan to give up for the new plan. They also joined in celebrating with Buhari during the swearing-in where John Kerry was also in attendance.
They now don’t have to use Boko Haram as a tool of attacking the Islamic Movement in Nigeria as the new President they have imposed, being a Muslim with Wahhabi inclination, could use the conventional Army to do it for them.
The President promised to finish with Boko Haram and make the country secured as part of his campaign promises. It is now left for him to implement the intended project of Killing Sheikh Zakzaky, dispersing the IMN and banning and outlawing it. This would be used as a means of suspending the Boko Haram project in Nigeria to show his blind supporters that he has won the war against terrorism a promised.
He attacked the IMN but as God would have it the entire plot failed with the events that followed the Zaria massacre. They intended to use force, calumny, hypocrisy and public sentiment to wipe out the IMN. The plot failed woefully despite the support it got from the imperialist nations.
In a nutshell, this is one of the reasons making Shekau to be having many lives. In the case of the Al-Qaeda terror project, when it finished, the major actor, Osama bn Laden was simply announced to have been killed and fed to the fish in the ocean. It was later discovered that Osama bn Laden changed identity and is still alive enjoying himself. One would have expected that when he was arrested he was taken to court, tried and prosecuted but the story simply ended that he was fed to the fish. And the movie Al-Qaeda ended.
In the case of Taliban when the project got to the end the American government simply removed the name of the group from the list of terrorists in the world.
That of the case of Boko Haram is that of Shekau being announced to have been killed by the Nigerian troops and that the troops have taken over all the local governments that were said to be under Boko Haram control. Just a few days ago, Shekau resurrected to continue with the next part of the movie.
It was after the Zaria massacre that the Nigerian Army announced that they have killed Shekau the supposed Boko Haram leader. And the Boko Haram was to be suspended and the President and his Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai to be celebrated as heroes for ending Boko Haram and fulfilling a campaign promise.
But the IMN lives on even as the leader is being kept in illegal detention by the presidency under the DSS. Possible ways of dramatizing an end to IMN have probably been lost and the movement had gained more sympathy, support and strength.
Now the only option left to deal with the IMN is to continue with the Boko Haram project and possibly even use it in eliminating the IMN leader and some of his followers. For that reason Shekau was resurrected again to continue with the Boko Haram.
He preempted the next project in his resurrection speech condemning Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his followers while the Nigerian President on his part declares that he will not talk about Chibok girls again because definitely he has no choice after failing his masters in bringing an end to IMN, Boko Haram has to continue. All the Army could do to change their former position was to declare that Shekau was insane and called on the people not to mind his threats.
Nigerians are now waiting in suspense to see what the next movie holds with the fifth life of Shekau as the presidency is silently submitting to the Boko Haram project. Will the government fail its promise to Nigerians to end terrorism or it will submit to its imperialist masters and nurture the Boko Harram as usual, we wait to see.
Re-Charge El-Zakzaky to court
By Abdulmumin Giwa
There is need to correct the wrong impression doing the rounds that there was a clash in Zaria between the Nigerian Army and the Shi’ites, an idea also adopted by the Daily Trust newspaper referring to it as “a bloody clash” in its editorial with the above mentioned heading published on 25th September 2016.
There was no such thing as Army-Shiites clash in Zaria on the 12th to 14th December 2015. What actually took place was a coordinated attack on the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) and its leadership by the Nigerian Army.
The Nigerian Army carrying heavy weapons attacked the IMN in a killing spree for a period of 48 hours, killing men, women and children, burning some alive and whisking away corpses which they latter deposited in mass graves, one of which was uncovered by the Amnesty International (AI).
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Nigerian Army clashed with the IMN most especially as the entire casualty was on the side of the IMN to the extent that part of the Report of the Kaduna Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI) described what the Army did as a massacre even as the IMN was not allowed to say its side of the story.
The idea of propagating the incident as a clash was to mislead the public and hide the incessant mass murder and genocidal attack of the IMN members by the Nigerian regime and it’s Army. The claim that it was a clash is very hypocritical.
More so, there wasn’t any ‘altercation’ between the IMN and the police in the FCT as stated by the editorial. The Nigerian police simply attacked a peaceful protest calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the revered leader of the IMN, His Eminence Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky(H) with life bullets and teargas.
The claim by the FCT Police Commissioner, Muhammad Mustapha, as quoted by the Daily Trust that the police command “is well prepared and possesses the wherewithal to confront any threat to existence of serene peaceful FCT” is funny. The IMN had protested tens of times in the FCT since the illegal detention of its leader by the government and no incident was recorded. There had never been any ugly situation recorded. The last protest march in the FCT raised eyebrows because the Police Commissioner decided to attack the peaceful protest simple. If he had not attacked it nothing would have happened as the protesters would have just protested and gone their way. But he made a situation of it.
More so, there is no law that directs anybody or group towards seeking the Commissioner’s permission to protest, the IMN protest inclusive. It is very primitive and dictatorial to attack peaceful protests by citizens thereby further worsening the bad human rights image of the Nigerian government. It is against all international practices.
Hence, the Commissioner describing the protest as “illegal and with satanic intention” best describes the primitive action he took attacking unarmed and peaceful protest.
As a trained police officer serving public interest he should have advised the government on the best solution to stop the persistent IMN protests by telling the government to respect the Nigerian Constitution and free Sheikh Zakzaky. Instead the Police Commissioner chose to join the bandwagon of sycophants to protect government impunity and disregard to the Nigerian constitution instead of the public interest.
The Daily Trust editorial also made reference to the report produced by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which is not in any way different from the biased report produced by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI) in Kaduna. Just as the JCI tactically refused to listen to Sheikh Zakzaky’s side of the story and the side of the story of members of the IMN in jail, so did the NHRC conducted its own sessions in secrecy. Nobody was there to study the memo presented to them by the Chief of Army Staff nor was he cross-examined by the IMN legal team.
It is in contravention of the rules of natural justice and fairness to conduct anything secret on a case of this magnitude that involves thousands of affected families, friends and well-wishers that are hungry for justice to be done. Justice needs not just to be done but to be seen to have been done. In the case of the NHRC it is not seen to have been done.
More so, by the rules establishing the NHRC, only its governing body can establish such a panel of investigation and as the time the panel of investigation was constituted the NHRC had no governing body. It is then extra-judicial and illegal. This only proves desperation from the side of the NHRC to satisfy the COAS and serve his interest.
Definitely, the abduction and illegal detention of Sheikh ibraheem Zakzaky is a violation of the Nigerian constitution which allows for only 48 hours of detention or for the detained to be charged to court. Here is the revered leader of the IMN being detained for over nine months without trial which is an act of impunity.
If the state can flagrantly violate the Nigerian constitution by illegally abducting and detaining the IMN leader and falsely claiming that he is under ‘protective custody with his consent’, what moral right does the government has to point against the IMN as being disobedient to the constitution except in what it interests it as suggested by the editorial? Is the violation of the Army rules of engagement not a violation of the constitution? One is tempted at this point to ask whether the Nigerian constitution is meant to be imposed only on the IMN in Nigeria especially by the government that hardly regards or respects court orders.
“The leader of the IMN should be tried speedily for any offences (if any) established against him and his organization I line with the 1999 CFRN as amended” is a significant quote from the report of the NHRC panel which the editorial sees to be very important.
What is even more important is that it was doubtful if there was anything to use in indicting the IMN leader and so it said “if any”. The Daily Trust editorial was also able to establish that “reason, logic, the law, the constitution, conscience and propriety are all on the side of the Shiites argument” after what the editorial termed “the Shiite efficient propaganda machine”.
Based on a weak support, the Daily Trust editorial called for the prosecution of the IMN leader on the grounds that “Shi’ites are believed by most Nigerians including their neighbors in Zaria, the police, the Army and the government to be essentially lawless who do not respect the rights of others and who do not recognize the constitution of the Federal Republic or the sovereignty of Nigerian state except where its serves its purpose”.
We expected that the editorial should have summoned courage to at least, when it said the Sheikh should be prosecuted, add the clause “or be freed”. It should have sited logical reasons why he should be prosecuted not call for his prosecution based on the beliefs of the self-appointed IMN adversaries.
At least the editorial had already established that “reason, logic, the law, the constitution, conscience and propriety are all on the side of the Shiites argument” and the NHRC is doubtful if the Sheikh should be prosecuted when it called for his speedy prosecution for the offences he allegedly committed saying “if any”, why not simply call for the immediate and unconditional release of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky?
If the government was sure it had satisfactory evidences to prosecute the IMN leader the editorial would not be calling on it to prosecute him, it would be talking about something else because the government would have since taken him to court. But because the government cannot boast of any offence he had committed to have warranted this genocide on the IMN is why it is keeping him and deceiving the public that they are protecting him with his consent.
Re-Army/Shiite clash: Rights Commission calls for immediate Trial of Shiite members
By Abdulmumin Giwa
The Special Investigation Panel of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chaired by Mr Okechukwu Ojukwu has just submitted its report on the Zaria massacre of December 12th to 14th 2015 to the Executive Secretary of the Commission Prof. Bem Angwe.
The NHRC Executive Secretary said the blocked public highway by members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) infringed on the freedom of movement of the Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai.
He also said that the IMN should make public apology to the COAS for blocking his way and infringing upon his right to use the highway. He added that those arrested in that effect should quickly be prosecuted.
It would be recalled that the Nigerian Army told the Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI) in Kaduna during its sitting that the convoy of the COAS cleared its way through, killing only seven IMN members when they blocked the way and no arrests were reported to have been made to that effect.
Those presently in detention either in Kaduna Central Prison facing cropped up charges by the state, or in anonymous military detention facilities across the country or with the Department of State Service (DSS) were all abducted by the Army at the Gyallesu residence area of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, the revered leader of the IMN and not at the Hussainiyyat where the said blockage took place.
In the case of the 191 IMN members in Kaduna Central Prison facing cropped up charges, including the killing of one soldier while no arrest of the soldiers who killed over 1000 IMN members was made, most of them were abducted by the Army at Gyallesu area five kilometers away from the Hussaiiyya. Also the abductions were made two days after the said blockade incident took place.
The remaining IMN members in the prison were arrested by the Nigerian Police in Kaduna metropolis on the 15th of December 2015 for protesting against the Zaria massacre. In effect, nobody was arrested at the Hussainiyyat for blocking the COAS convoy. The COAS had since killed those who blocked his way and passed.
The abduction of the members of IMN took place more than five kilometers away from the Hussainiyya Baqiyyatullah two days after the said road was blocked and those arrested were never arrested at the scene of the incident. More so, all those at the scene were killed and their corpses taken away by the Army as they cordoned off the area.
This implies that nobody was arrested for blocking the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff Lt. General Tukur Buratai but over 1000 people were killed by him within the next 48 hours of the blockage for a yet to be known reason.
With these facts on ground, who then is going to be prosecuted for blocking the COAS convoy? Is it the seven people he said he killed or who?
Definitely the NHRC is only making an empty statement to justify the claim by the COAS that his convoy was blocked by the IMN members for which the Army spent two days in a killing spree where they massacred over one thousand innocent and unarmed civilians.
The surface information made available to newsmen never mentioned the 347 IMN members mass buried by the Army, nor the remaining over 500 other members of the IMN missing since the pogrom. It only recommended that compensations be paid to families of those killed from both sides without stating the figures.
The Nigerian Army initially never mentioned having any casualty until it realized the extent of the damages it had done committing mass murder of civilians without any casualty onn its side and claiming that it was a clash. So the Army mysteriously produced one dead soldier they claimed to have been killed by IMN members who was never examined and certified to have been killed by the IMN by an independent doctor.
For this, the Kaduna state government which was holding about 200 IMN members in prison for disturbing public peace and other charges added the killing of the soldier as one of the charges against the almost 200 of them. One would wonder how 200 unarmed civilians would kill a heavily armed soldier in the midst of hundreds of other armed soldiers.
No soldier was arrested, detained and prosecuted for the killing of over 1000 IMN members to further show that it wasn’t a clash but government committing genocide on a mminority.
Apart from this fabricated case of killing a soldier no other soldier was killed but the Kaduna state government told the JCI how it assisted the Nigerian Army in mass burying over 347 IMN member killed by the Nigerian Army.
Prof. Angwe also mentioned that soldiers found violating the Army rules of engagement should be prosecuted but he refused attributing the fault to the COAS for ordering the use of excessive force on unarmed civilians including women and children and engaging in extra-judicial killings for 48 hours. Who is going to be prosecuted for carrying out the orders of the COAS? Is it the individual soldiers or the COAS that gave the order? More so, the General Officer Commanding 1 Division of the Nigerian Army in Kaduna Maj. General Olaniyi told the JIC that he acted on orders from above.
Members of the IMN killed by the Nigerian Army did not fall from the sky, they have relatives, friends and loved ones and no serious mention of any compensation was made in that regard. What manner of investigation is this where human beings killed are just referred to as if they were ants swept away?
For the sake of balance, fairness and natural justice, the call that the IMN should apologize to the COAS for blocking his way should have been complemented with a similar call on the COAS to go and kneel down before the leader of the IMN Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, with live media coverage, and beg his forgiveness for killing three of his sons, shooting him and his wife severally, burning his elder sister alive, setting his residence ablaze and killing over 1000 of his followers for a claim of road blockage he knew nothing about.
The NHRC should have also asked the COAS to render public apology to Nigerians for terrorizing civilians and violating the Army rules of engagement through extra-judicial killings of over 1000 unarmed men, women and children.
The commission should have also told the COAS to publicly apologize to over 1000 families he had unjustly infested with sorrow tears and blood by either turning the mothers into widows, the children into orphans and to the hundreds of children born after the pogrom whose parents he had killed.
If it was actually a Human Right Commission wanting to bring about peace and tranquility and not wanting to satisfy the greedy whims and caprices of the COAS, the NHRC should have also demanded for such public apology to be made by the COAS as well, as the rights violations from his side were even more brutal and uncivilized.
Already, reputable and independent human rights organizations including the Amnesty International (AI), the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) of London have all in their various investigations indicted the Nigerian Army of genocide and crime against humanity asking the COAS to come clean on the Zaria Massacre. It is not surprising that the NHRC is different because it is not independent.
The NHRC made an impossible recommendation to ban blockage of public highways which is part and parcel of the Nigerian culture during its events and merry makings. Such a ban would only infringe on the rights of the citizenry as well. Politicians, carnivals, Churches, Mosques, Sports Fans, Labor Unions, Entertainers, Traditional institutions and a lot of others all block highways during their grand activities and are all entitled to it. Even the Nigerian president resorted to blocking highways before he could win elections. So it is truly foolish for one to ban the use of highways by citizens when the need arises just to please the COAS and make his case genuine.
Lastly, it is very important to note that the Zaria massacre as purported by the commission was not a clash nor was it spontaneous but a plotted and well-coordinated military attack on the IMN by the Muhammadu Buhari regime. There is no evidence to prove anything like a clash between the IMN and the Nigerian Army. Heavily armed troops laid siege on the IMN members chanting anti-Shiite slogans and killing anybody they identified as a Shiite and in some cases even seeking the help of thugs from Gyallesu to identify the Shiites from among the captives. If the thugs say he is Shiite the soldiers will then kill him or torture him to death and if they say he is not Shiite they will release him. How could this manslaughter be described as a clash?
Anyway, everyone is aware that the NHRC is yet to have a governing body as its affairs are under the supervision of the Executive Secretary and not an appointed chairman. The laws establishing NHRC does not give the Executive Secretary the power to set up an investigation of this magnitude. The NHRC is in the best position to tell why it had run an investigation and produced a report.
Until the report is made public for proper scrutiny, the surface information made available leaves a lot of doubts as to where the NHRC is heading to though it claimed it would be fair to both sides.
Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs only doing his job.
By Abdulmumin Giwa
The Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, told newsmen in New York that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is not willing to disrupt the process of inquiry initiated by the Kaduna state government and has decided to allow full process of the law prevail in the case.
He said with regards to the JCI report that the government will study the report, the Attorney General will look at the report and whatever measure needs to be taken would be taken.
He made the statement in response to a question from newsmen as to the continued detention of the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky.
To preempt this write-up, the Mr Oyeama actually made an empty statement and the newsmen on their part made news of it because he actually had nothing to say.
The revered leader of the IMN was abducted and illegally detained without charges for over nine months now in contravention with the Nigerian constitution and violation of the Sheikh’s fundamental human rights.
Hence his illegal detention has nothing to do with the Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI). He is not being detained by the JCI nor is his detention ordered to be continued by it. In fact the JCI had to extend its period of sitting to seek ways for the Sheikh Zakzaky’s legal team to meet with him in detention. In fact the JCI was even inaugurated while the Sheikh was already in detention.
More so, the issue of his detention was not discussed by the JCI during its sessions nor did it bother to make any issue of it. Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky is being detained by the presidency under the Department of State Service (DSS) and not by the JCI.
The DSS and the Attorney General of the Federation are respondents in a case at the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking to enforce the fundamental human rights of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and the payment of N2 billion as general damages.
The DSS even told the court that the revered Sheikh was under ‘protective custody’ and with his consent after refusing to allow his lawyers to receive regular briefs from him. They also told the court that they have spent a whopping N5.1 million taking care of him.
The DSS told this to the court to dismiss the saying that the revered leader is being detained illegally without any charges. If his detention had anything to do with the JCI, the DSS would have told that to the court. But it didn’t because his detention had nothing to do with the JCI.
More so, the JCI never summoned Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky before it nor demanded for any memo to be submitted by him even as it had the powers to summon him and he is with the DSS. It is also the same with others arrested at the scene of the massacre that are in the Kaduna Prison facing cropped up charges including killing one soldier where the soldiers killed over 1000 of them and none of the soldiers was arrested or detained.
From the news piece reporting the minister’s statement it would be seen that it was only one question that the minister was asked and he deviated from the question and occupied the space with a relative empty answer. If he had been asked a second question as to whether the JCI had anything to do with the detention of the IMN leader, the Minister would have fumbled but he successfully carried along the journalist by giving him something to write about.
It would be recalled again that the Nigerian President himself used the JCI as his defense when asked on the same issue during his maiden media chat. He accused the IMN of running a government within a government and also defended the extra-judicial actions of the soldiers. He stated that he would not want to preempt the JCI so they would wait for its report.
So the minister using the same defense line tells you that they are only using the JCI as a joker before they are able to devise a way out of the mess.
The JCI was inaugurated and the commissioners were sworn-in, they went through the sessions and came out with a report without a statement to be accredited to Sheikh Zakzaky or the IMN, the JCI also made its recommendations as well. The state government also inaugurated another committee to produce a whitepaper from the report and the committee was given two weeks to finish its work. The public is yet to hear any committee being set up by the Attorney General to study or review the report but Mr Onyeama claimed that it was being studied.
In the report, which was later made public, the Nigerian Army was indicted and their action in Zaria was declared by the JCI as a massacre. It also called the Army as to need to respect its rules of engagement. But there wasn’t any serious indictment of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky except for the accusation that though he was not on the scene of the incident he was the leader of the Movement and did not call his followers to order when they blocked the Chief of Army Staff which of course is a stupid accusation by the context of the Nigerian constitution. Do they have any evidence whatsoever that he was the one that ordered the COAS to be blocked? Why then should he be accused of not stopping them from blocking the COAS? So is a stupid accusation.
However, those soldiers who were seriously indicted by the JCI are walking the streets free, none of them has been ordered to be arrested and detained while the Sheikh who had virtually no indictment against him is in detention. This further clarifies that the JCI report has nothing to do with arrests and detentions nor does its submissions influence any.
More so, whosoever is indicted by the JCI is only recommended to be prosecuted by a proper court of law which would require further investigations and evidences. In essence it has no link with the illegal detention of the leader of the IMN.
Buhari’s regime is deceiving Nigerians on the issue of the detention of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, it had messed up and killed innocent unarmed civilians and is seeking for a way out of the mess, simple.
In his position as the Foreign Minister, Mr Onyeama was only doing his job of protecting the already shattered human rights image of the government and he would have to do it even if it would take ‘an executive lie’ to achieve. So the minister was only doing his job of helping deceive the public.
And do not even be surprised that it was organized for him to be asked that question while he gives the defensive answer to block any further issue to be raised on that matter while the president was there. It is very possible by the nature of the question and the answer.
It should be recalled that there are calls on the United States by some congressmen against the Nigerian government to stop further sales of arms to the Nigerian government sighting the killings and mass burial of 347 Shiites in Zaria as one of their several reasons.
Even the way the minister answered the question was apologetic and defensive trying to show a good image of the government which has already been condemned by highly reputable international human rights organizations in the world. The Zaria massacre has dented the human rights image of the Nigerian government in the international scene and the government is battling to defend itself and present the opposite.
So definitely the minister of foreign affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama was only doing his job to get a good meal on the table.
The Kaduna Massacre of 15th Dec 2015
By Abdulmumin Giwa
Most of the times the gravity and intensity of certain events cover others that are of less gravity and less intensity than them, not because they did not take place but because the graver and more intense the more talked about.
The Zaria massacre of 12th to 14th December 2015 where over 1000 members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IIMN) were brutally murdered by the Nigerian Army and buried in mass graves, in an attempt to wipe out the Movement seen as a threat to imperialism, has in a way over shadowed the Kaduna massacre of !5th December.
Without the Zaria massacre, the Kaduna massacre of 15th December would have been a highly talked about incident judging by the level of brutality and force used as well as the casualty.
Military force was the final resort of achieving the imperialist’s aim of wiping out the IMN and its leadership after several attempts and the Nigerian leaders were ready to serve as imperialist stooges and kill their people and give flimsy excuses. The intention of the imperialists was simply to kill Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, demolish all buildings owned by the IMN, disperse the followership and ban the Movement. The assumption was that after this action the IMN would seize to exist.
On their part in Europe and America, they would control the intensity and gravity of the genocide by keeping the mainstream media away from the human massacre. The Saudis on their part funded the Wahhabi clerics to blackmail the Movement and make an ugly image of it.
Those in whose states the attacks were to take place, especially the state Governors, are to ensure there was no uprising or protest against the mass murder by also using force to suppress it while the Army would ensure they cover up all possible traces to mass murder.
They planned the massacre with the assumption that people would be scared of the intensity of the attack and run away while they would with ease kill the leader, frame him and the followers disperse them and ban the Movement. The entire plan was on this false assumption that woefully failed.
Firstly, they practically killed the revered leader of the movement but he didn’t die and the assumption that for fear of their terror posture the IMN members would disperse also did not work. More so, the blackmailing of the IMN and propaganda by some traditional and religious leaders only exposed the whole thing and turned it into a sectarian attack and genocide perpetrated through impunity by those in power. Instead of ruining the IMN, it was made more popular and stronger than ever before.
In trying to use force to suppress any attempt to cry out after the mass murder of the IMN members in Zaria by the Nigerian government, the Kaduna massacre took place.
A lot of IMN members that were not at the flag hoisting event in Zaria on that fateful day have heard through communicating with relations, friends and loved ones in Zaria how the Nigerian Army was busy butchering them. One would be speaking to his daughter and she would be telling him to pray for them as the soldiers have already killed those close to her and are coming towards her and that would be the last time they would ever speak with one another again.
Barely every member of the IMN in Kaduna had experienced a distress communication with another victim in Zaria. It was indeed a very sad incident. There are even those that could not withstand the pains and they left Kaduna for Zaria never to come back again as they were murdered while trying to sacrifice their lives for their leader.
Those in Kaduna have been staging peaceful protest marches day and night calling for a stop to the killings with men, women and children crying and chanting slogan in the streets. Anywhere they passed by, those whose minds have been infected by Wahhabism mocked at them as they were celebrating having their brothers in authority killing Shi’ites for them. Imagine the mentality of those poisoned hearts that have lost their humanity to Wahhabism.
Also, contacts were made through all possible ways by people of conscience to get the soldiers to stop the murder spree but it was beyond the control of those who called the Presidency, Governors, Politicians, Ministers, Senators, Representatives and other top echelons in the society that sympathize with the IMN to put a stop to the killings. All possible peaceful ways were sorted but all in vein because it was an order from above to finish with the IMN.
The IMN members came out on the streets peacefully protesting in their numbers in Kaduna. To even ensure the plot to suppress any reaction was met to the letter, on the 15th of December 2015 the peaceful protest to stop the Army from killing IMN members in Zaria was attacked along Tudun Nufawa main road.
The IMN members were aware of the plots by the security to frame any protest and give it a bad image either by inducing a mob action and pushing the protesters into burning public property and attacking the public and so the protester remained focused and resolute chanting only relevant slogans and passing only through safe routs.
The IMN members avoided passing through routs that could be used to incriminate them so they avoided passing through Tudun Wada in particular because of the Police station there in order to avoid being framed. Alas, the Police Public Relations Office in Kaduna could not wait to study the situation before they went on radio to lie to the public that the IMN was going to attack the Police station at Tudun Wada a neighboring residential area to Tudun Nufawa where the protest was taking place.
In the middle of the day truck load of heavily armed mobile policemen intercepted the protest shooting at unarmed men, women and children with life rounds. The mobile police killed 15 people in that attack, and injured many. My own ten months old son and his mother were suffocated with teargas. Several others were arrested amongst who was my wife’s younger brother for protesting the Zaria massacre in Kaduna. It was extremely brutal and heartless.
Those arrested are among the 191 now in Kaduna Central Prison being charged to court on cropped up charges all as part of the initial plot against the IMN. While those arrested from Zaria are facing the charges of killing one soldier while they were being massacred, those in Kaduna are charged with disturbing public peace for protesting the massacre. Since then the state government had manipulated the courts and kept them in jail for over nine months now. Some of them with injuries were left to die without treatment in prison. It was really very wicked and inhuman.
The children and women also arrested in Zaria that were later freed in Kaduna were also joined in the court case but were later excluded due to row by the public. The government came out to shamelessly announce that it was not going to prosecute women and children even as there were under aged among those in prison.
On the same day of the attack, a combined team of police and soldiers besieged the Islamic center in Kaduna and the youth were ready to take on them head on but were forced to leave the place because it has not been part of the IMN to engage in violence and they obediently left.
In order to avoid repeating what they in in Zaria where they destroyed copies of the holy Quran and other Islamic books and packed them with the rubbles, all the copies of the Quran and other Islamic scriptures in the Kaduna Center were evacuated.
The good side of the IMN the government and its agents always exploit is its abhorrence of violence and its orderliness. They were always confident that they could come-kill-and-go of the IMN with virtually no casualty on their side.
The attack on the peaceful protest in Kaduna on the 15th of December 2015 was very brutal and a violation of the constitution as well as an act of incivility. It was in attempt to suppress any reactions that would bring failure to the plan of wiping the IMN but the plot still failed. The IMN is even stronger and more popular than it was before the December attack.
It is also in the records that the Kaduna stat government had played very many roles in the Zaria Massacre as though they were part of the plot from the onset. This is among the many crimes of the Governor Nasir El-Rufai on the Shi’ites genocide that history will live to remember.
How gallant
By Abdulmumin Giwa
I still cannot comprehend why the Nigerian Army will spend a period of 48 hours in a killing spree of unarmed civilians with a lot of them being women and children.
What could be the justification of this kind of inhumanity and animal behavior? Imagine using war machines on civilians; machine guns, AK 47s, RPGs and APCs killing young men, women and children.
During the December 2015 Zaria massacre, those that were shot and taken to safety were chased and killed at close range in just the same way as some were also burned alive. One of the eye witnesses mentioned how a soldier used a digger to kill an unarmed civilian simply because he is Shi’ite. He hits him with it randomly until his colleagues told him to stop he is dead. Only an insane person would do this to an animal not to talk of a human being.
I still can’t imagine the level of devilishness that would lead a human being, simply because he is wearing war attire, snatch an infant being breastfed from the hands of the mother and swing it into a pile of dead bodies. This is unimaginable. But the Nigerian Army did this to members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) in Zaria. The victims and eye witnesses keep coming out to testify and nobody seems to see anything wrong with this terrorism simply because the victims were Shi’ites.
Who is he that is in his normal senses that will stab young girls on their breasts with bayonets and hit them with sharp objects on their private parts? Such must be a lunatic. The victims are still alive mentioning what the Army did to them.
Imagine soldiers gathering unarmed civilians inside a mosque and raining live bullets on them until the bullets magazines become empty and everywhere quiet. They then entered inside the mosque checking on those who are still breathing and finishing them up at close ranges. The Nigerian Army did this to members of the IMN at Darur Rahma in Zaria during the Zaria pogrom.
The Army put together corpses in Gyallesu and called on thugs to scavenge them and steal their personal belongings like pocket money, phones and even removed rings from their fingers. Hoiw animalistic could one be.
Where is it a practice of the nation’s formal Army to attack unarmed civilians in a civilian residential area using heavy weaponry and killing incessantly and even setting a stopwatch for those that have taken cover telling them they would burn them down if they don’t come out? When some of them came out they were killed and those that didn’t come out were burned alive in the place of refuge.
The attack on IMN by the Nigerian Army in Zaria from 12th to 14th of December 2016 was a display of practical terrorism by a state Army.
Imagine cutting the throat of an unarmed thirteen year old boy by shooting him consistently with a machine gun on the throat at close range and also blowing off the brains of his brother all in the presence of their father lying in a pool of his own blood. This is how the Nigerian Army killed two of the second set of three children of the IMN leader killed by the Nigerian Army.
To even prove that it was an intended genocide, the Army was seen in broad daylight pulling away corpses of the IMN victims as they shot them and made piles of them. Some of them were not necessarily dead but had bullet wounds but were all gathered and taken in the middle of the night to unknown locations and mass buried. What kind of crime would one commit to deserve this inhumanity? Imagine yourself surviving a terror attack with a bullet wound and being buried in a mass grave with corpses. This crime was committed by the Army and the Kaduna state government and yet they are working hard to justify it and sweep it under the carpet as though nothing had happened.
The wife of the IMN leader was shot severally in the womb and was taken away by the soldiers who forcefully removed the bullets from her body without anesthesia. Just imagine this kind of cruelty.
They killed over 1000 of the IMN unarmed members driving their Armored Personnel Carriers on the corpses of those they killed to get to the war machine closer to the residence of the IMN leader.
There are just too many war crimes committed by the Army in the Zaria massacre and all the witnesses and survivors still alive are ever ready to testify on these acts of terrorism.
It is now clear to all that it is with the intention of covering up these crimes that the Kangaroo Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI) was formed by the Kaduna state government which never bothered to investigate the Army terrorism in Zaria.
The JCI did a surface job to cleanse the real perpetrators of the crime and reduce the entire crimes into a surface mention that would discourage further digging into the terrorist acts committed by the Army. They deliberately refused to hear the side of the story of the IMN as they deceive the public that they were investigating the incident.
How can the Nigeria Army commit such a heinous crime against humanity without the knowledge of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces? If he didn’t order the massacre what stopped him from arresting and prosecuting or even asking for explanations from the Chief of Army Staff?
If the massacre was not plotted, definitely the Army would not have engaged in a series of cowardice, jumping from one lie to the other on the defensive. The Army claimed that there was attempt to assassinate the COAS, they claimed that his motorcade was blocked, they claimed that the IMN members were gathering after the initial road blockage, they claimed that they were on a codon and search operation, the Nigerian president that commanded them claimed for them that the IMN was running a government within a government and the Kaduna state Governor helped to claim for them that the IMN had placed residents of Gyallesu in bondage for several years.
No genuine reason that would justify this human massacre and genocide has so far been given by any of the parties that are guilty of the crime. In fact they are still in search of what to say to justify the crimes. After abducting the leader of the IMN Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and placing him in illegal detention they are joined by the boys of the president in the DSS to lie to the public that the IMN leader is being kept in protective custody with his consent and that they have spent N5.1 million looking after him. This blatant lie also never held any water as it is now clear to all that they are keeping him in a deteriorating health condition hoping that he loses his sight before he comes out.
To digress a little, the Nigerian army and the presidency knew very well that the IMN was unarmed even before they decided to massacre its members. If they knew the IMN was actually armed they would never have attempted that reckless attack on it because more than half of the soldiers that took part in the operation would have perished. One could judge this from the morale of both the two parties. The soldier is striving to survive and enjoy his allowances after finishing with his opponents while the IMN member is striving to be victorious in his course or attain martyrdom in the process. Definitely the morale of the IMN is higher. If it would take the Army over 48 hours on a killing spree of UNARMED IMN members made up of men, women and children protecting their leader, how would one imagine the situation if the IMN was armed? Definitely they would thrash the Army in bits.
With all the retrogressions caused and attacks on state interests perpetrated by the NDA in the creeks that include sabotaging the Nigerian economy through the bombing of pipelines the Army had dared launching a crude attack on them as on the IMN simply because they knew the militants are armed. The government wants to dialogue with the militants because they are armed. One wonders how gallant an army could be.
We in Nigeria have grown to know that the mentality of the uniformed personnel especially the Nigerian Army is that of a superior citizen to other Nigerians. He could do anything extra-judicial and go away with it simply because he is wearing the army uniform. He could molest and harass a citizen, trample upon his fundamental rights and even crudely torture him in the name of punishing him for offending him. It is with this same military mentality that the Nigerian President is ruling the country. They even arrogantly and egocentrically describe other citizens as ‘bloody civilians’. Imagine this terrible and uncivilized mentality. A unit of the society that generates virtually zero income to the country whose job is to be paid by tax payers to protect the territorial boundaries of the country turning out to be killing innocent unarmed civilians. It is only in Nigeria that this incivility can take place unchallenged. It is also only in Nigeria that you find the military doing police work.
These Army brutalities have gone along way creating resentments and hatred for them in the larger society in such a way that arrogance, suppression, inhumanity and terrorism have turned out to be the new definition they have given to gallantry of the Army. With this kind of new concept of gallantry one would not need to be told that the country is heading towards a doom as things are moving from bad to worse and from worse to…..? Somebody said hell. Funny, soldiers fighting unarmed civilians, how gallant.
Politics, sectarianism and extremism
By Abdulmumin Giwa
Following his state broadcast on the Eid-el-Kabir celebration, the Kaduna state Governor Nasir El-Rufai made some statements that touched my heart not because of the sense of the statement but because of how he is at variance with what he was calling on the citizens to do.
I mean because his dispensation as a governor differs completely from what he was preaching to the people of the state.
He said “Let us reject the negativity of the demagogues who seek to turn us against each other just because our faith and tongues may differ.”
He also added that “Humans cannot be wiser than Almighty who bestowed the joy of diversity.”
The speech was full of calls towards respecting human rights, living in peace with one another and coexisting harmoniously.
It started by reminding me when I watched him through the glass screen between the editing room and the main studio of the Freedom Radio Kaduna when he was having a live interview on his campaign being anchored by a self-acclaimed enemy of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, also heading one of the departments in the Radio station.
The anchor of the program deliberately asked the governor whether he was a Shi’ite or a Sunni by putting his question sarcastically asking the Governor whether he had joined Abdullahi bn Saba. Ignorant of what the question really was about, the Governor asked the anchor who Abdullahi bn Saba is. The anchor then explained to him that Abdullahi bn Saba was the Jew that founded Shi’ism.
Immediately, the Governor could not control his emotions and declared that he was not a Shi’ite while he explained that he was being framed by his political opponents, who have printed posters of his condolence visit to Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky when the Nigerian Army murdered 34 members of the IMN including three of the Sheikh’s biological sons.
He explained that what happened to the Sheikh was wrong and every human should sympathize with him. He added that imagine killing not one of your sons but three at a time and that was why he went there to show sympathy and also condole him.
But he didn’t leave the talk there he said “Allah ya isa” (seeking God to avenge) on those who spread the rumor that he was Shi’ite.
He was of the opinion that it was abusive for him to be termed Shi’ite thereby displaying where he belonged even as he was seeking the votes of Nigerians irrespective of their faith and tongue.
I personally expected him to be intelligent enough to use the opportunity to call for unity through understanding and tolerance after explaining that he was not Shi’ite and explain that Shi’ites are also Muslims and Nigerians as well and we should shun such things that seek to divide our ranks in our quest for national developmental progress. But he didn’t probably because he want expecting as much votes from the Shi’ites as he is expecting from his Wahhabi brothers.
He was afraid of losing votes from the Wahhabis who will not vote for him if he was Shi’ite and was willing even on radio to identify with them while he dissociates himself from the Shi’ites. It was actually a trap by the anchor and his Wahhabi brothers which he fell into as the anchor is known for his negative comments on the Shi’ites on radio.
Just ten months after the Zaria massacre where the Nigerian army murdered over one thousand IMN members burning some alive, shooting others at close range and abducting and detaining others, the Governor is now here calling on citizens of the state to reject the negativity of demagogues who seek to turn us against one another on the basis of faith and tongue.
It is worth asking here, which negativity of demagogues led him to playing a role in the Zaria massacre where a said minority faith is castigated by some sectarians with which the Governor identifies and subsequently attacked?
It appears that the negativity of demagogues has influenced the Governor by turning him into a sectarian and extremist that he cannot accept the other people’s religious understanding.
He was furnished with fabrications and lies labeled against the IMN by those whom he trusted as belonging to the same faith with him while he castigated and blackmailed the IMN to justify the Army massacre.
He falsely claimed that the IMN had placed residents of Gyallesu under bondage for years, that the IMN took over lands illegally, that the IMN seized mosques from other Muslims and turned them into their and so on an so on.
It must have been the same negativity of demagogues that influenced the Governor into demolishing the worship places of the IMN, burial grounds and the residence of its leader Sheikh Ibrahem Zakzaky and ferried the rubbles away.
It was the same influence that blocked his eyes and mind from understanding that those attacked and killed are human beings and Nigerians as well and have the right to choose what faith to belong to as ordained by the freedom of religion in the Nigerian constitution.
More so, after the massacre of innocent unarmed citizens in Zaria by the Nigerian Army, in his position as a politician and acting under the influence of negativity of demagogue he joined the Army in mass burying the victims of the massacre. This influence made him to contravene religious laws, state laws and the Geneva Convention where they buried men, women and children some of who were alive but only injured and then buried.
He was soon to establish hatred and enmity between himself and IMN members as he is seen to be acting the script of the Wahhabi extremists who see every other Muslim as an infidel because they differ in understanding of the religion. He is happy being a hero of the Wahhabis who praise him for partaking in what they call the jihad of eliminating Shi’ites.
His saying that “Humans cannot be wiser than Almighty who bestowed the joy of diversity” is also at variance with his benchmark so far. The Governor cannot be wiser than Almighty by making himself an opponent of the IMN as his heart cannot tolerate the IMN not to even talk about understanding its concepts and ideas. All he knows about IMN are the lies he had been fed with by some Arabic speaking idiots who are the fanatics of Wahhabism.
All these and many more make me doubt the idea about the elite describing himself as an accidental civil servant now a politician, and becoming more inclined to the statement of the former president Olusegun Obasanjo that the elite is a pathological liar.
I wonder what the Governor’s position now is that he played a role in the killing of another set of three sons of the IMN leader after going to condole him when the Army killed the first set of three during the President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime.
What is the rationale behind the earlier humanitarian gesture and the current active crime against humanity? Could it be that it is that feeling for which he said “Allah ya isa” when he was called a Shi’ite that is manifesting or a way of proving to those Wahhabis that he is one with them?
Everyone would say that his statements and actions during the campaign that led him to Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky were simply political. This is so because now that he is part and parcel of a government that murdered innocent unarmed men, women, and children and also killed another set of three sons of the IMN leader condoled he is not mincing any words or actions in castigating and blackmailing the IMN.
Not only politics is involved in the Governor’s action, other factors like the influence of the negativity of the demagogues he is preaching against has eaten him up and is now acting like a sectarian in the most extremist manner forgetting his earlier position of being human.
I wonder the eyes with which the Governor would look at the revered leader of the Movement his Eminence Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky (H) when next they meet. What then would he tell him? On the contrary, will he continue to make all efforts to ensure that he never meets the IMN leader again for the rest of his life? If so then how does he hope to achieve this?
One thing I know about the IMN leader is that he has a very big heart of gold and has the power to forgive and pray to God positively.
Anyway, I will close with a hadith from the Sunni source and in fact from the An-Nawawi collections where the Prophet SAWA is reported to have said there are three signs of the hypocrite, when he speaks he lies, when promises he fails and when he is trusted he betrays. How best would we describe Nigerian politicians?
Re-IMN’s provocative #BringBackOurZariaGirls campaign Who is afraid of #BringBackOurZariaGirls?
By Abdulmumin Giwa
I was shocked and surprised by the piece attributed to a guest contributor on Naij.Com by the name Gabriel Onoja. Judging by the issue he was writing on, I never expected such a naïve and quick approach to the issue at stake by a right thinking analyst. It was terribly cheap as though it was the Nigerian Army that wrote the piece in defense of its dirty work.
The piece was un-researched and myopic and full of straight conclusions without genuine references or convincing analysis. By simply reading it one would deduce that it was written by a pen in a defensive mode seeking a way out of a calamity, simple. The tone of the piece was antagonistic towards the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) and trying to seek public sympathy through false allegations and empty statements.
I said I was shocked and surprised because I never expected any right thinking person to treat an issue of such magnitude with such simplicity. Because it could simply be asked that, if one claims that the Nigerian Army abducted 50 girls in Zaria and another person feels it is not possible, is enough to simple push the issue aside and call on Nigerians not to listen to the call? This is too cheap and stupid.
What would be expected is for a call for investigation into the matter so as to substantiate the facts because those concerned are equally Nigerians enjoying the same citizenship as you that doesn’t want to hear about the issue at all.
More so, if the writer was not mischievous and his pen was not compromised for some monetary benefits from the accused Nigerian Army, he would not have called for investigation of those asking for the whereabouts of the abducted Zaria girls, he would have rather called for an investigation into the allegation. Alas it is clear who is paying for the piece to be written. The ‘allegation’ is too serious to be wiped under the carpet as being attempted by Onoja.
The writer made an empty reference to the report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry (JCI) established by the Kaduna state government to inquire into the Zaria massacre perpetrated by the Nigerian Army in order to deceive his readers.
Let me talk about the report a little. What is now clear about the report, which I am sure the writer had not read, is that nothing whatsoever was heard from the side of the IMN as no memo was submitted by it and it was not cross-examined. This is not because the IMN didn’t want to, but because the government, being fully involved in the massacre, didn’t want the commission to hear from the IMN.
They refused to bring the sole victim of the massacre Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzkay to testify before the JCI even as he is being held by the government in what they call protective custody. There are also 191 IMN members arrested on the scene of the massacre that are in Kaduna Prison that were not brought to testify before the commission. Where then has justice been to when the JCI was sitting that the government and its JCI, all accomplices in the crime against humanity, were expecting a third-party account from the side of the IMN?
Hence a one-sided report and recommendations were made and submitted as planned by the government. The report is at total variance with the recommendations made proving that the recommendations were imported into the JCI to achieve a particular aim.
More so, as the writer hungrily defends the Nigerian Army the JCI he is deceptively referring to had indicted the Nigerian Army for acting outside its rules of engagement and engaging in the mass murder of men, women and children and even burning human beings alive, actions differentiating it only in name with Boko Haram.
This submission of the JCI had raised a lot of eyebrows even in America where a law maker in the US, Tom Marino is calling on the US to stop Arms sales to Nigeria because the Army is using such arms to kill innocent and unarmed civilians giving the Zaria massacre as an example. He said this in an open letter to the US Secretary of State John Kerry and even promised raising the matter before the assembly.
I think you would have better described this law maker as Boko Haram for calling on the US not to sell or assist Nigeria with arms because the government is using the arms to kill innocent unarmed civilians and not the Shi’ites on who the arms are being used. I say this because of your allegation against the IMN that they are Boko Haram instead of the Army whose actions are in no way different from Boko Haram.
For your information, the IMN which you described as Shi’ite has never engaged in any form of violence but is a victim of violence perpetrated by the government as well as Boko Haram. This shows the unity of purpose between the government and the Boko Haram. The Boko Haram bombed the IMN killing scores during its symbolic trek from Kano to Zaria in 2015 and only a few months later the government’s Army joined the Boko Haram and did even worse than the Boko Haram killing over one thousand.
Hence if Boko Haram have abducted 200 Chibok girls, what is there to be surprised about because its official partner in the killing of IMN members have abducted only 50? You now know better who the real Boko haram is.
Here is a writer in Nigeria paid to defend the Army that is terrorizing civilians by mischievously describing the victims of Army crimes against humanity as extremists. Definitely common sense has it that it is either the Nigerian Army he is defending that deserves being described as extremists or he that writes in their defense that is the extremist but not the IMN that is the victim of their atrocities.
The JCI reports that 347 IMN members were buried in a mass grave at night to hide the acts of terrorism committed by the Army, the Amnesty International has confirmed this and even added that the Army cordoned off the areas they committed the crime to clear them of all traces of their terrorism, washing blood stains and picking bullet shells after packing away over hundreds of corpses and finally the Kaduna state government came in with trucks to destroy the physical evidences of the use of heavy bombs on unarmed civilians with the intention of sweeping everything under the carpet. This clearly proves who the terrorist is and who the extremist is.
The IMN had published a list of at least 850 persons and their profiles while it was still collecting the figures that were missing since the pogrom in several news dailies and on the internet. The government and its Army are all aware of this but have never at any time denied that those people were actually missing. If out of 850 the JCI was able to trace that in violation of state laws, religious laws and The Geneva Convention 347 were buried in a mass grave by the Army, where then are the remaining missing persons?
The missing persons were abducted by the Nigerian Army amongst who are the 50 girls and the missing students the writer is accusing the IMN of fabricating.
Shamelessly the writer called on well-meaning Nigerians to call out on the IMN on what he described as its irresponsibility of using the #BringBackOurGZariaGirls tag. What is irresponsible about this? Is it the abduction of the girls or calling for their freedom? This is just an element of the Free Zakzaky Campaign which is even making the other campaigns to be heard of. Peaceful protests have been staged in New York, Paris, and at the Nigerian High Commission in London. It has been staged in places like Canada, India, Russia, China and in most countries of the Middle-East. That of London was staged in the very presence of the Nigerian President Muhammadu during one of his visits to London where he was condemned for tyranny and inhumanity by the protesters in London.
What popularity is there to show to this campaign that it has not gotten? None! The issue is not the campaign but where the campaign is falling. It is falling in the deaf ears of the Nigerian leaders who are too arrogant, tyrannical and deep into impunity to listen to the calls from people of conscience even as the calls have never stopped.
In the IMN each and every one of the members is Sheikh Zakzaky and whatever is happening to him is happening to those millions of his peaceful followers. That is the logic behind concentrating solely on the Free Sheikh Zakzaky campaign because it covers every other thing and is the gravest atrocity of all the other atrocities that his fundamental rights are violated. The atrocities committed by the Army during the Zaria massacre are too numerous to launch campaigns on each independently but are all covered under the Free Sheikh Zakzaky campaign.
How many campaigns would one launch to seek redress with the numbers of atrocities committed by the Army? Is the campaign going to be on the incessant killing of unarmed civilians, on the killing of women, on the killing of children and infants, on burning human beings alive, on burying people alive, on molesting and raping women or on violation of fundamental rights of the victims? Will the campaign be on the Army for killing civilians, or using heavy weapons on unarmed civilians, or mass burying its victims illegally, or violating its rules of engagement or even engaging in extra-judicial killings or contradicting the constitutional provisions and wrongly doing police work? Which campaign is going to be launched on the Zaria massacre?
The answer to this is that campaign that carries in it all the hundreds and thousands of crimes and atrocities committed by the Nigerian Army in the Zaria Massacre and that is the Free Sheikh Zakzaky Campaign!
Why would anyone be afraid of the campaign for #BringBackOurZariaGirls under the Free Sheikh Zakzaky campaign if he is not guilty of something? Who is afraid of the campaign?
abdulmumingiwa 