The Audacity In Shiites Clash With Nigerian Police, By Ikpa Isaac

The Shiites in Nigeria have a strong affinity with Iran. It is a country regarded as the hub of global terrorism and the Shiites in Nigeria operates under the deceptive tag of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN).

Over the years, they have remained audacious outlaws. Days back, the sect members again violently clashed with the Nigerian police, which attempted to stop their illegal procession to Zaria from Kano city.

The violent interface with the police occurred despite the ban slammed on the sect both by the Kano state Police and the Kaduna State Government in Nigeria. In all the instances of the loathsome sect’s clashes with security agents in the country, they disguise under the banner of religious processions, weird in its entirety and in dissonance with laws of the country.

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Led by an Islamic preacher, Sheik Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, for nearly four decades, Shiites in Nigeria have proved to be a thorn in the flesh of Nigerians, with their irreligious bluster, strange doctrines and easy inclination to violence. Zaria, Shiites or IMN’s host community and precisely, their headquarters in Kaduna state of Nigeria has known no peace since its introduction in Nigeria.

Therefore the sect’s recent clash with the Police and other such violent confrontations with members of the public is just an apt reminder of the adroit disposition of these irreligious miscreants, as above laws of the land, who can even attack law enforcement officers on lawful duty.

In the latest encounter with the Police last Monday, another Shiites leader, Sheik Sanusi Abdulkadir Koki, led the Shiites from Kano city on a procession to Zaria for the annual feast of Ashura or what they also refer to as the Arbaeen Trek to Zaria for mourning martyr Imam Husain (AS). And at Kwanar Dawaki in Dawakin Kudu LGA of Kano state, the police sought to stop the sect’s procession, having received complaints about its illegal procession, with a high tendency to cause its usual public disturbances or breach of peace.

Like in the case of the clash with Nigerian soldiers in December 2015, rather than obey the police order, the Shiites exhumed their inclination to violence by aggressively confronting the police, with dangerous weapons, resulting in deaths on both sides.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Potiskum, Yobe state, the preceding day, road blocks mounted by Nigerian soldiers on the outskirts of the town tracked down Shiites members in trucks heading to Kano, the first destination of this year’s annual Arbaeen Trek, from where they would move in a procession to Zaria.

Surprisingly, when a check was conducted on them, assorted dangerous weapons, such as guns, knives, cudgels, cutlasses, bows and arrows among others were found in their possession. One would think they were on a hunting expedition; a tale more believable than their claims of journeying for a religious feast. It was testimony to the bizarre doctrines of Shiites as well as the indulgence of body and soul of adherents in violence.

The IGP, Ibrahim Idris Kpotum also testified to the violence-prone nature of the Shiites, who create avoidable upheavals frequently.

Kpotum explained that the Shiites, “Attacked our officers, killed one of our officers, one has sustained an arrow wound on his head.”

This obviously illegal assemblage of Shiites mobilized their members from parts of the North with a mission to congregate in Zaria, the same state; government had declared the sect and its activities illegal. But the most resentful aspect of the entire drama is the Shiites guts to kill and injure state security agents so wantonly.

Had the police reacted to Shiites senseless affront, which was capable of provoking state reprisals, more deaths would have been recorded. And the same sect would have rushed to public domain with all manner of accusations against the Police, including the use of unreasonable force on Shiites.

Like the IGP noted, it is the constitutional duty of the police to stop any aberration on public law and order. The confrontation of the Police and killing of any officer by the sect is condemnable in all ramifications.

Human Rights organizations have again remained mute, because they feel security agents in Nigeria don’t have rights to be protected or deserve to live. And when organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch eventually break their silence with a report, the security agents would be the first casualty of their songs of human rights violations. This is unacceptable!

Governor el-Rufai revealed while slamming a ban on the provocative sect that IMN in Nigeria is an illegal sect thus:

“The Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Zaria Clashes of 12-14 December 2015 found that the IMN is not a registered organization, that it has a paramilitary wing and that its members do not recognize or respect the laws of the country and the duly constituted authorities that have the responsibility to secure and administer the country.”

It is difficult to explain why Shiites have failed to appreciate that since it is not a registered organization in Nigeria, the ban by KDSG has proscribed the sect in any other part of the country, hence the headquarters of the sect is in Kaduna.

Additional, what is the rationale behind a religious sect wielding lethal weapons in the guise of observing a religious festival? It is not only criminal, but stretching the patience and hospitality of government to cracking limits. The Shiites members responsible for the clash should immediately be arrested, investigated and prosecuted to serve as deterrence. 

While commending the restraint of the Police to the beastly acts of the Shiites, the Nigerian government must ensure Shiite movement ceases to operate anywhere in the land until they do the needful by giving it a legal status and a defined decent code of operation. 

Finally, the Kano incident has exposed the emergence of another Shiites leader in Nigeria identified as Sheik Sanusi Abdulkadir Koki who led the onslaught on security agents. He should be arrested and charged for murder of security agents and breach of public peace, before he recoups his sect members for reprisal attacks on the state.

Enough of the affront on the Nigerian state, by this decadent Shiite sect. As the sect scouts for paid conmen in the guise of human rights groups or some NGOs to defend their illegality, government should expedite actions for the arrest and trial of the suspected Shiites.

The recurring fact is that Shiites are not the only Muslims in Nigeria. But other Muslims worship in mosques and do not brandish weapons or attack security agents in the course of worship. So, why must Shiites conduct their religious affairs on streets or roads, with lethal weapons? 

The actions of the IMN members in obstinacy demand deeper inquest by security agents. IMN’s links with Iran is suspicious and if taken for granted, Nigeria could be unknowingly breeding another wing of Boko of Haram terrorists with ties and sponsorship from ISIS. But like the sect fruitlessly tried to blackmail the Nigerian Army and the COAS Gen. Tukur Buratai in the Zaria incident; similar such campaigns on the Police in the Kano will also backfire.‎

Ikpa is Executive Secretary, Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency and contributed this piece from Abuja.

The Shi'a Victim Syndrome, Paid Mourners and Dangerous Propaganda, By Gabriel Onoja

The Shi'a sect's manifestation in Nigeria: the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN),has apparently been ramping up its propaganda.Its strategy has improved to now include delivering its version of the truth using respectable clerics, editorials of respected online publications, talking heads that saturate the airwaves and columnists that seemingly appear to be writing across the divides. 

One of the latter category,Chris Ngwodo, penned a write up "Nigeria’s War Against the Shi’a" which perfectly fits into the new slant of covertly threatening the nation to accept IMN's excesses without the extremist group having to tone down its own insurrection against the secular state.Like all the other formats of the newfound strategy,the new approach adopted by the Shi'a sect is drawing on an asset they had the foresight to set up,their convoluted accounts of past events are now being quoted by those newly deployed to manage their propaganda efforts. 

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True to a time worn IMN strategy of blaming just about everyone but themselves,Ngwodo's article in one breath blamed President Muhammadu Buhari's administration for a phantom Shi'a ordeal while in the same breath acknowledged that they had a run-in with the law in 2014 when a different government held sway. In the traditional disdain the group has for anything related to constituted authority, security agencies that acted to contain the excesses of a belligerent group and those who dared exercise their rights to speak against IMN extremism were described as "extremist voices" and "monsters". 

The piece tried to confuse the issues in IMN's December 2015 confrontation of the Army when it said President Buhari tacitly justified the massacres. It may be a topic for another day and another context but it is fraudulent to describe attackers that died in a counter-military operation as massacred. The ones that survived among them should be answering charges for using helpless women and underaged youths as human shields. 

The writer alluded to a Nigerian state that has "escalated its hostility against the Islamic Movement in Nigeria" since the 2015 incident as a prelude to dismissing the genuine efforts made in getting to the root of that crisis.It did admitted that the Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up by the Kaduna State government indicted both the army and the IMN,it sidestepped the report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC),which was unequivocal in placing the blame on the leadership and members of IMN.That report specifically demanded the immediate trial of IMN leader,Sheikh El-Zakyzaky for precipitating what Ngwodo termed "massacre". 

The import of two separate but related events were lost on the author of that pro-IMN missive.First,the decision of Katsina,Kano and Kebbi states to follow in the footsteps of Kaduna state in outlawing the IMN is apparently the product of popular demand that other states will do well to emulate. No group has the right to plague persons of other faiths and convictions and not expect the state to step in as an umpire. Secondly,the condemnable attacks on Shi'a Kaduna,Funtua, Sokoto,Kano and Jos should give members of the group and their paid commentators cause to ponder what they did wrong to provoke such morbid outrage among other nationals. 

Describing these development as "state-backed systematic persecution and extermination of the Shi’a" is therefore disingenuous and the true hallmark of bigotry. Several fundamentals might have simmered beneath the surface over the years but where one of the parties to the situation decides to escalate aggression,it will take an irresponsible government not to act in the collective interest of all citizens,which in this case implies that the rest must be protected from the aggression of the errant group.No one has said the Shi'a cannot practice what they hold dear,but they must also recognize by the same token that the rest of the country have the right not to be coerced into Shi'a doctrine's. 

The writer of the referenced piece,if he is above 45 years old,may wish to cast his mind back to when he was younger and see if there was so much noise about sectarian differences in Islam.If he is a younger person he should ask those who should know.What he referred to as "anti-Shi’a prejudice" has more to do with the responses of states and individuals to IMN aggression.To then try whipping up anti-Sunni prejudice in response to anti-Shi'a prejudice is to be himself guilty of what he is preaching against.If he takes a sincere reality check,he will realize that there is a growing disenchantment with the faiths and sects that are driven offshore.Even if such disenchantment were in its early stage,the pursuit of secularism is what will work for Nigerians and not foreign funded and driven divisions,as he correctly observed at some illuminating point in his article. 

That illumination was however absent when it claimed that IMN members only held peaceful protest marches that were then attacked by mobs and security forces.Such claims could only be made by someone that has never had a taste of the horrors that the Shi'a outfit is capable of inflicting.

The Charges against the Shi’a 

This capability of the IMN was at the root of outlawing the group. Once it has gotten to the point where it openly took on the Army and even reportedly made an attempt on the life of the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) it became glaring that the nation was not dealing with a ragtag of urchins.Outlawing the IMN in Kaduna state by the Governor,Mallam Nasir El Rufai was a logical step.As the order noted, IMN does not acknowledge the Nigerian state,a fact demonstrated by it not bothering with registration; the group was militarized,it preaches extremism while its members had remained confrontational and unruly in the aftermath of the 2015 incident. 

Other groups may hold similar views in their closet but they will get a taste of the state when they escalate matters to the level of the IMN. Boko Haram has tried it and they now know better.The oil militants have tried it and they are walking back their folly. 

That El ZakZaky,the IMN leader once take pro-constitutional and pro-state stances does not rule out the possibility of recanting and denying the primacy of the secular Nigerian state.If he once spoke for constitutionality and then more recently opted to fight the institutions and concepts enshrined in the constitution, the previous views expressed are no protection to shield him from security agencies that must do their work. 

This is a mistake that the political class must not repeat.They have in the past allowed demagogic sects to fester and only acted when it was too late.Criticisms like the ones unloaded by Ngwodo must not petrify them from blocking the ride of another extremist group.When IMN take over public spaces with their processions to the discomfort of others it is a matter of time before the will raise flags,claim territories and enforce their own version of reality.Now that it is known that no sect or faith should hijack state infrastructure,we must move to the next state of stopping Friday prayers and Sunday services from obstructing the roads.

The Strange Politics of Anti-Shi’a Activism 

It is indeed strange that Shi’as are minority in one paragraph and they become strategic to El Rufai,Buhari,and the All Progressives Congress winning elections.Since their numbers can swing votes then they are not in the minority,at least not on the scale they're marketing to the world. They should thus exploit the strength of their numbers at the polls and that is if they are willing to recognize,held by the Nigerian state.

Sowing the Wind of Extremism 

It is for the precise reason that Nigeria should not be proxy battle ground for the Middle East that it becomes imperative for the Government of The Federal Republic of Nigeria to counter external influences here. If the wind of extremism is being sown in Nigeria the proof have been traced to Iran as state sponsor of terrorism – cache of arms uncovered,spies arrested in Lagos,financial ties with IMN and other smoking guns.Once Saudi Arabia can be implicated even on a smaller scale,any group they are financing would have a run-in with the law. 

It must be noted that it is the institutions of state like the Nigerian Army that have been at the forefront of the anti-terror fight and the IMN has done a lot to attempt tarnishing such entities using Amnesty International and Islamic Human Rights Commission. 

The military has not relented in doing the needful apparently because there is that commitment to ensure that replication of the Middle East kind of chaos would not work here irrespective of how much IMN or any other group assigned to make it happen does. 

Ngwodo apparently managed to let slip an agreed talking points for the new IMN propaganda onslaught.It is that claim that the other Muslim sects and Christians would be the next in the firing line once the Shi'as have been disposed of. He even found an opportunity to remind readers of ethnic cleansing and genocide in one desperate attempt at fear mongering. 

Protecting Minorities and Securing Democracy. 

Minorities need not take up arms in response to this unwarranted fear mongering.The first protection that minorities – be they ethnic, religious or sectarian – need is to be shielded from the danger posed by IMN.Beyond making life unbearable for everyone,the sect has been promoting the idea that insurrections can be carried out without consequences.No minority group should buy into this fallacy. Rising up against the state is never the best option. 

To protect minorities and secure democracy,what is needed is to prevail on President Muhammadu Buhari not to relent in ridding the country of all forms of extremism since it is now clear that Boko Haram is not the only fanatical group.If Mr President can do this for Nigeria then his legacy is secured.

Onoja writes from Jos.

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