The unfortunate event of Saturday 12th December 2015 in Zaria has turned a few people into overnight experts in international diplomacy and religious conflict. Some have used the clash between Nigerian army officers and members of the Islamic movement of Nigeria (IMN) to justify their pre-election fears that President Buhari is an Islamic fundamentalist who is out to make Nigeria a 100% Islamic nation. I wonder how any individual interested in spreading Islam will go all out to crush a sect that canvasses for the establishment of Islam everywhere. The Aljazeera report on Saudi Arabia leading a coalition of Islamic nations against terrorism did not help the president as some wondered when the country was signed up to be part of any Islamic alliance. I really do not know if that has to do with Nigeria being a member of the Organization of Islamic Countries.
The debate has mostly been about whether the Army was right or wrong in dealing severely with the Shi’ite movement in Zaria and how the killing of over 100 people can be justified. What was the source of the casualty figure? I believe that came from a certain Ibrahim Musa who is a spokesperson of the Islamic nation. He seems to have been the one addressing various media outfits especially some based in Iran. His first submission on Sunday was that Sheik Al-Zakzaky’s wife and son were among the dead. Even when the Army came out on Monday to say that Al-Zakzaky and his wife were in protective custody in Kaduna, he insisted on his story. He also mentioned at a point that the dead numbered hundreds to thousands. Al-Zakzaky’s daughter was reported on an Iranian website to have said that her father was fighting for human rights against a government which did as it pleased. She also said they had video evidence and proof of all that happened. Ibrahim Musa also said that Al-Zakzaky was critically ill after being shot with 4 bullets lodged within his body. He said this was the reason why the sect leader could not leave the house even when it was surrounded by soldiers.
Who really is Zakzaky and what exactly happened on Saturday? There was a website created on bregava.tripod.com and most likely run by the Islamic Human rights Commission (IHRC) in probably 1996 or 1997 to create awareness and fight for the freedom of Sheik Mu’allim Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky who had been jailed in September 1996 along with 3 other men. His biography on that site has it that Al-Zakzaky was born in May 1953 and finished from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria with a first class in Economics in 1979. It is indicated there that he was denied his degree because of his Islamic activity. He must have been radical in his mindset prompting him to proceed on a sojourn to Iran from where he returned with Iranian and Shi’ite ideals.
The IHRC were not silent on reporting alleged losses incurred by Al-Zakzaky’s followers from September 1996 to December 1998 when he was released after the demise of the late military dictator Sani Abacha. Abacha was ruthless in dealing with any perceived or real enemy of his rule. He sacked Ibrahim Dasuki as the Sultan of Sokoto and had a former associate Ken Saro-Wiwa hanged with 8 others because of the Ogoni struggle. Abacha must have feared that Al-Zakzaky and other sect leaders could potentially lead an uprising against him so he had them locked away and Al-Zakzaky was charged for treason and sedition in August 1997. They reported that the police kidnapped certain Shi’ite women and children in February 1998 and also killed protesters in April 1998. They also put up photographs of dead bodies from various clashes at that time. The most recent incidents involving the Zaria Shi’ite community are a suicide bomb attack on a Shi’ite procession on November 27 2015 allegedly carried out by Boko Haram and several people killed in July 2014 by Nigerian soldiers including 3 of Al-Zakzaky’s children. Those who have been quick to label President Buhari as genocidal should also place president Jonathan in that bracket based on their logic.
The Army spokesperson who addressed the press on Al-Zakzaky’s apprehension explained that the initial confrontation between Lieutenant General Buratai’s convoy and agitated Shi’ite members began at about 2:30pm on Saturday. There is an edited video on Youtube on the incident which was most likely captured by someone on the side of the army. The short video began with senior army officers ordering their troops to exercise restraint and not shoot at the human blockade. The officers including one colonel (from what I could see) talked with a few men who stepped forward from the angry mob mostly in Hausa. It was clear they pleaded with the mostly young people to vacate the road and allow the convoy to proceed on their journey. The negotiation did not appear to work as the mob moved even closer to where the officers were and practically engulfed them. The officers kept speaking to them and made frantic phone calls supposedly to Al-Zakzaky but the young men clearly brandished machetes, sticks, clubs and other tools which were not very visible on the screen. They began to chant and scream “Allahu Akbar” and something else I cannot decipher. A few of them had what were probably cameras or video recording devices as if they were there prepared for a rumble to breakout.
There is no footage of when the first bullet was fired but the video continued with the Army convoy proceeding on a road blocked by burning tires. The conversation from the footage at this point suggested that there were in an area called Sabon Gari and one soldier could be heard telling another that their commander had ordered that the bodies of the dead should be carried although someone else may have heard counted, I am not sure. Most of us have seen movies where a standoff is in play between good guys and bad guys or two opposing forces. There usually is no intention to discharge weapons until someone steps on a twig or sneezes and all hell would be let loose. Is there a possibility that something like that forced the soldiers to shoot at the Zakzaky’s men and force their way through or were the soldiers just reckless like their past history suggests? The army spokesperson explained that they had to approach the enclaves of the Shi’ite group because of intelligence report that the sect members were regrouped and poised to wreak havoc. Army sources said they suffered losses and casualties due to the response from the sect members while the IMN spokesperson and Al-Zakzaky claimed that everyone in their Husainiyyala was killed as well as some people found at Al-Zakzaky’s home and other enclaves.
It is difficult to believe the Army’s narrative on the matter of casualties because they did not provide any figures; some people believe that it was a no-contest from the start. The number of dead reported by most media outfits is supported by an audio recording of Al-Zakzaky‘s telephone conversation with someone widely reported to be an Iranian Official. Sheik Abdullah Husseini according to a Press TV (Iran) interview published on Sunday 13th December 2015 is a lecturer at the Al-Mustafa University in Johannesburg South Africa. From the interview, he was in Iran at the time and informed the interviewer that he had called Al-Zakzaky and had subsequently released the audio recording to certain media outfits for propagation. He told the lady that he heard gunshots during the conversation with Al-Zakzaky but I do not know if it is just my ears but I listened to that recording about three times and did not hear fireworks in the background. He ended the less than three minutes conversation by assuring Al-Zakzaky that he would do all he could to assist and he also said he would inform the office of the leader and one Dr ‘Mustafawi’. I wonder who the leader he referred to is; perhaps the Nigerian leader?
Al-Zakzaky sounded pretty much relaxed during that phone conversation and responded calmly to mostly leading questions from Husseini like “how many people have been killed, you don’t know?” and “so your life is in danger then?” Al-Zakzaky made comments like “we’ve heard the bomb” and “they took the whole house and seized it”. He claimed that he had been boxed in for 11 hours at the time of the call on Sunday with soldiers shooting and killing people and I wonder why it took so long for the soldiers to finally apprehend him on Monday morning. Is his house a fortress or are the Nigerian soldiers so bad that they were unable to overrun unarmed supporters who guarded a peace loving cleric’s house? By the time Premium times reported the story on the 13th of December, Ibrahim Musa claimed he did not know where Al-Zakzaky was holed up but the Iranians knew that he was in his house which was surrounded by soldiers and policemen who spent the entire night shooting.
The army has voluntarily indicated that they will be open to scrutiny by the National Human Rights Commission and have not been too explicit about the entire situation. Governor El-Rufai was reported to have met with Al-Zakzaky and he alongside other prominent leaders has sued for peace. Iranians are broadcasting the news like it was something which happened in Tehran and some people were reported to have protested outside the Nigerian embassy. The narrative generated by the IMN seems to have wooed a lot of sympathizers to their side but I cannot trust such a plot due to the signs of inconsistency and conspiracy that is apparent to me. The army has a history of steamrolling non-hostile civilian populations before so a thorough investigation into this matter and concrete evidence is the only way this institution can be absolved of blame.
One should wonder why following Al-Zakzaky seems synonymous with death. People have been killed for decades now because of being affiliated with this man. I am not certain he should be regarded as the victim in this case; whether we admit it or not he has to be complicit in how things degenerated on Saturday. I will rather wait for the result of the inquiry into the conflict as demanded by other nations and the presidency before I make any conclusions on the army’s role in escalating things. At the moment, I have not seen any footage that proves the heavy-handedness of the soldiers. Karl Maier’s book “this house has fallen” tells a tale of how injustice and corruption in Nigeria led to the rise of various militant groups some of which have matured to full-blown terrorist networks. It is important that some people try to lay their hands on such books so that they can understand the relationship of Al-Zakzaky and other sect leaders like him to the rise of insurgency in the North. There may not be any concrete evidence of violence carried out by Al-Zakzaky’s followers but there has to be something fundamentally wrong with a sect that has stronger ties with Persia than it has with Nigeria. It is important that the sovereignty of Nigeria is exalted above that of any other nation. These nations should not be permitted to dictate to us how to run our affairs. We should be able to properly investigate this matter and ensure justice is served especially if it is proved that our soldiers erred. At the moment, I chose to stand with the Nigerian Army until evidence dictates that I do otherwise.
Apologies for any bias with respect to Sunni and Shi’ite believers; I do not claim to be an expert on this or on Al-Zakzaky for that matter.
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