Southern Kaduna indigenes have commended the freedom of Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, in from culpable homicide charge by Kaduna State Government.
The Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) stated yesterday that the discharge and acquittal by the High Court showed that El-Zakzaky and many other citizens were wrongfully clamped into detention and their fundamental rights violated.
SOKAPU’s spokesman, Luka Binniyat, stated: “The discharge and acquittal of Sheikh El-Zakzaky and his wife after over five years of unlawful detention and trial is one of several other acquittals of low and high profile indigenes and residents of Kaduna who have annoyed Governor Nasir el-Rufai and sent to prison.
“We rejoice with the Shiekh over his freedom and congratulate the judge for his courage and forthrightness in that landmark judgment.”
According to him, SOKAPU is elated by this development in the same way it celebrated, in 2019, the discharge and acquittal of the highly respected Southern Kaduna elder statesman, the Wazirin Adara, Bawa Magani, who is the second-in-command to the 2018 assassinated traditional ruler of Adara Chiefdom, the second biggest traditional council in Kaduna after Zaria Emirate.
He added: “Magani was arrested like a common thief with eight of the most high ranking elders of Adara land, including a retired police commissioner and clamped in Kaduna prison for 120 days in the same circumstances that Zakzaky was jailed.
“Their arrest came at the peak of the mass slaughter of Adara natives and the destruction of their villages by those that surviving victims always identify as armed Fulani herdsmen. Investigation by the police later cleared them of any wrong.”
