The piece written by Muhammad Al-Amin, tilted "Before we hang El-Rufai" and published on New Citizen, an online news m...
The piece written by Muhammad Al-Amin, tilted "Before we hang El-Rufai" and published on New Citizen, an online news medium attracts my attention to make this rejoinder, though not on everything he said but on some of the aspects on which he tends to be economical with the facts.
Al-Amin has mentioned a lot of things in his piece to justify the brutality with which Malam Nasiru El-rufai had ruled Kaduna for whatever reason even though most of those that read the piece might be pushed towards believing that he is doing it to show that President Bola Tinubu needs to carry him along.
On several issues, he had touched on, he made only a surface mention while on others, he dwelled so much all in his effort to give a beautiful painting of a person mostly seen as a demon by those he ruled over for some bloody eight years especially the issue of COVID-19.
Justifying the immediate last point I made, it is known to all that El-Rufai himself had to beg for forgiveness from the people of the state while asking them not to look at him while voting his anointed candidate Uba Sani as governor. If he was as good as Al-Amin is depicting, he wouldn't have to eat his egocentrism for dinner.
Even if Al-Amin is working to see that El-Rufai should be carried along by President Tinubu, it would have to be out of compassion or other party decisions but not because he believes in the Tinubu agenda, as he outrightly campaigned for Southeast presidency during the ruling APC primaries as against Tinubu who is from the Southwest.
That not withstanding, I wish to handpick one reference Al-Amin made in his piece at the moment to put the matters straight as it concerns what he said about the Shi'ites group in Kaduna and their leader Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky.
The writer is economical with the truth as regards his references on the Shi'ites as he belittled the Shi'ites group in trying to convince his readers that El-Rufai acted in good faith.
He wrote "As a leader, Malam Nasiru El-Rufa’i condemned the indiscipline of the Shi’ites and publically criticised the attitudes of Shaikh Zakzaky and his followers regarding public peace and obstruction of free passage for other road-users."
This is just a surface reaction also mentioned by El-Rufai as one of his reasons for staging a clampdown on the Shi'ites, and extra-judicially murdering, men, women and children for the crime of belonging to another religious belief system he does not approve of.
In Nigeria, no one is denied the right to use the roads as a citizen. That is why in all parts of the country people stage protests/rallies, Canivals, political rallies, Friday prayers and even parties on the roads.
One wonders why El-Rufai should single out the Shi'ites for excersizing their rights as citizens. More so, as organized as the Shi'ites have always appeared, they have never denied other people the right to use the roads even when they are staging their activities, this fact is known to all.
In addition to his claim, Elrufai had claimed that he is fighting the Shi'ites because they do not see him as the governor of Kaduna state, do not recognize the Constitution of Nigeria and that he does not approve of some of their spiritual activities especially the annual trek for Imam Husain (AS).
Are these enough reasons for him to be killing them and bundling them to prison without recourse to what the Constitution he claims to believe in provides?
El-Rufai had extra judicially killed hundreds of the Shi'ites and imprisoned many others who were attacked whenever they protested against injustice labelled on them for their crime of being Shi'ites.
Elrufai who hypocritically established a Judicial Commission of Enquiry (JCI) in Kaduna to justify to the cold-blooded murder of over 1000 unarmed men, women and children in Zaria by the government in 2015 also acknowledged that he buried over 300 of those killed in a mass grave at night at Mando village in Kaduna.
This confession was forced by the Amnesty International (AI) after his government kept the criminal act against humanity silent.
He was hailed by his favorite Islamic sect as performing a great Jihad by killing the innocent and unarmed Shi'ites in Zaria and Kaduna but he never came out to dissociate himself from their claims.
The Saudi leadership, who are Wahhabi/Salafi, Sunnis, who at that time were opponents with the Islamic Republic of Iran, who are Shi'ite Muslims gave him full support as part of promoting their policy.
This incident was mentioned in a statement by the spokesman of the Saudi ruler Muhammad bin Salman while on a trip to Germany. That with their connections in Nigeria they have successfully reduced the strength of Iran in Nigeria by wiping out Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his followers, a job performed by El-Rufai.
Infact on this particular issue, I wrote an open letter to the president Muhammadu Buhari to seek confirmation of the statement of Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia if it was true that they were funded to kill innocent unarmed Nigerians simply because they share the same religious jurisprudence with Iran. There was actually no reply to that even as the letter went viral and was published by some international media in Europe and the Middle East.
The report of the JCI established by El-Rufai, as well as the recommendations given did not in anyway justify the already prepared white paper El-Rufai issued in which he declared the Shi'ites group as an "Unlawful Society", which is a total contradiction to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights while claiming democracy. This is in total violation of all known international laws.
The religious sects he favoured have propagated the murder of Shi'ites to their followers as a rewardable religious act performed by El-Rufai while campaigning for his return to office.
They used the murder of Shi'ite men, women and children by El-Rufai to campaign for his return to office, how inhuman. They even call him a great Jihadist that is eliminating the enemies of their faith. El-Rufai never spoke against all these.
He justified using state security apparatuses to extra-judicially kill the Shi'ites whenever they come out staging rallies on the streets for which the Shi'ites have a long roll call of those killed or out in prison without recourse to law.
There is a long list of those he had killed so far and nobody sees anything wrong with that simply because those killed were Shi'ites and do not practice the Islam of the Saudis he approves of.
One very interesting thing about this is that it was when he became governor that he realized that the Shi'ites group is a nuisance. Because when he was campaigning for his first tenure, he paid a visit to the house of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky aksing for his support. Sheikh Zakzaky saw him off to his car at the end of the visit.
Presently, El-Rufai is one of the few Nigerians waiting to face International Criminal Court (ICC) for his crimes against humanity. He marginalized an unarmed section of the society he sees to be helpless and was killing them because of their faith. What is worse is that Nigerians don't see anything wrong with such illegality simply because the victims are Shi'ites. While on the other hand armed terrorists, kidnappers and bandits are left to party.
Indeed, even before anybody hangs Elrufai, Elrufai had since hanged himself.
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