Blasphemy Killings: Muslims, Not Christians Were Killed, Zamfara Gov. Says

[caption id="attachment_11178" align="alignnone" width="696"]Alhaji Abdulazeez Yari[/caption]

The Governor of Zamfara State and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), Alhaji Abdulazeez Yari, has said that the eight people who were burnt to death over alleged blasphemy in the state were Muslims and not Christians.

Recall that eight persons were set ablaze following an argument between two students of a polytechnic in Talata Mafara.

It was learnt that one of the students was alleged to have committed blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed, resulting in a mob reaction and violence that led to his death and that of seven others who were burnt alive.

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But Yari, while speaking with State House correspondents shortly after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday at the State House, Abuja said that the victims were Muslims and not Christians as reported.

He however, vowed that perpetrators of the violence will be arrested and prosecuted.

Yari said: “At the time I left Zamfara, no arrest had been made. Immediately the incident happened, the school authority shut down the institution.

“The police and DSS are carrying out their investigation and soon there will be arrests. The government will not take this lightly, people taking the law into their hands?

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“If you say the punishment of those who abused the Prophet should be death, and you now kill innocent people, and by the way there is a government in place; there are laws and there are courts where Islamic laws are practised in Zamfara.

“So why should someone take the law into his hands? So definitely all the culprits will be brought to book.”

On whether the violence was religious in nature, the governor explained that it was a fallout of a disagreement between two students.

He explained: “I think what happened was unnecessary and it was not supposed to happen. From the intelligence report I got from the security agencies, there was a fight between two students and I think one of them injured the other and started shouting that his assailant had abused Prophet Muhammad and other students came and beat the other boy who is Yoruba and from Kogi State.

“Some people said he was a Muslim and some said the boy was a Christian, so they beat the student until he collapsed and thought he was dead. Then security personnel requested help from one shop owner who then took the boy to the hospital in his car.

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“Then the students heard that the boy was still alive and was in the hospital. So they went to the hospital. However, the boy was rescued by soldiers in the hospital. But I don’t know if the boy is alive or dead now.

“Then the students went back to the polytechnic and burnt the shop of the person who gave his car to rescue the boy and they came back to town again and you know the police in the division, they don’t have enough men to contain riots, so before reinforcement could arrive, the crowd threw tyres on the man’s house and burnt the house down.

“That was how everyone in the house was killed and everyone killed in the house was Muslim and not the rumours going around on the social media that Christians were killed in Zamfara.

“In fact, the mob wanted to go and burn churches and attack non-Muslims but the security forces stopped them. Talata Mafara is my home town and that’s where I live.”

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