By Muhammad Baqeer
The Leader of adherents of the School of Thought of the Progeny of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him) in Nigeria, also known as Shiites, or Members of Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, has told President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to stop using force on the movement, saying, “No force can kill ideology rooted in divinity’.
He decried that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has continued the policy of trampling on their rights as contracted to the former administration of late Muhammadu Buhari by the global foes of Islam and Muslims.
Sheikh Zakzaky who addressed a group of Journalists in his Abuja residence yesterday on the occasion marking the 10 year anniversary of the massacre of several hundreds of his followers in Zaria, lamented that Shia Muslims are the most persecuted Muslim Community in Nigeria.
The leader who revealed that the 10th year anniversary of the Zaria Massacre coincided with the occasion of International Human Rights Day, is an occasion that can never be forgotten in the history of Nigeria in particular, and humanity in general, and neither can it be forgiven given the grievous atrocities that were committed by the Buhari administration against them.
Sheikh Zakzaky who said the Tinubu administration, at its inception, promised not to continue with the policy of persecuting or repressing the Shiites in Nigeria, has, regrettably, continued to persecute and spill their blood without committing any offence against anybody or the Nigerian state, which is a gross violation of their fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and the International human rights charter.
The leader of the Islamic Movement revealed that his followers are being denied every single right of theirs that included – peaceful assembly, freedom of association and even freedom to bury their loved ones that the state kills without any form of provocation whenever they were carrying out their peaceful programmes in Abuja and in other parts of the country.
The Sheikh therefore advised the government to rethink its policy of attempting to use force to repress the movement which is a divine ideology, stressing that no force can repress an ideology rooted in divinity.
He also assured the government that the Islamic movement is not a violent organisation and which had proven through its several years of its existence amidst all forms of repression that it does not believe in taking the law into their hands despite the persecution.
Our peaceful approach throughout these years ought to have taught the government that we are not enemies of the state that deserved to be treated the way we are treated.
He therefore called on the government to release hundreds of the members of the Movement that have been arrested since 2015 to date and kept in various prisons and detention centres without committing any offence.
He also called on the President Tinubu administration to order immediate the release of all the corpses of their slain members for befitting Islamic burial.
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