Shiites To FG: Your Bid To Declare Us As Terrorists Is Senseless
The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), popularly known as Shiites, has described as “senseless”, moves by the Nigerian Government to declare its members as terrorists.
The Shiites said this following reports that the Federal Government had obtained an ex-parte order from a Federal High Court to label the group as a terrorist organization.
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“There is no law that allows the Nigerian government to just wake up and proscribe a religious group. We are not some registered organisation. We are a religious group. Do they mean that we will no longer say our five prayers? That we will not go to Mosques or visit Mecca? This is senseless,” the group’s head of media, Abdullahi Musa, told Premium Times.
“They should go ahead. They don’t need a court order to do what they have been doing, the Nigerian government does not obey court orders. They have been killing our members. When they went to Zaria to kill over a thousand of our members and buried them in mass graves, they did not get a court order to do that. When they killed our members severally in Abuja, they did not get a court order. They should go ahead. But nothing can stop us from practicing our faith.
“This is like saying that the Catholic Church or any other church has become a terrorist organisation. Nigerians cannot be quiet. If they fail to speak up, today it is the IMN. Tomorrow it can be any other set of worshipers. They are calling us terrorists, who did we terrorise? They are the ones who have been terrorising us,” Mr Musa said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government’s bid to proscribe IMN is coming against the backdrop of several protests by the group that have turned violent and resulted in many deaths.
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The Islamic group has been staging protests mostly in the nation’s capital of Abuja to call for the release of its leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, who has been in custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) since 2015 despite a court order for his release.
El-Zakzaky had been arrested alongside his wife after a violent clash that occurred between the Shiite members and Nigerian soldiers in Zaria, Kaduna State, in 2015.
