We reject the renewed bid to stigmatise the Islamic Movement as Violent
There appears to be some renewed efforts by the government and its
agents and agencies to indelibly label the Movement as “violent and
terrorist” as a means of “finally nailing the coffin once and for
all.” By this evil design, the free Zakzaky campaign now gaining
momentum and indeed the Movement, will be done away with finality.
This is a multi-faceted scheme with involvement of agents at various
levels and layers.
Recently, the Federal Attorney General, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN, gave
an indication that proved that some sinister motives were behind their
refusal to obey court judgement, when he hid under the cover of what
he termed “public interest” as against the tag of “protective custody”
they initially used.
The bait here is to initiate some very alarming disruption of public
peace in the name of the Islamic Movement in order to reach their
goals. This evil design of disruption of peace in our name is plotted
to be of a magnitude and proportions as to sufficiently frighten the
public and want them want to avoid us like a plague. This will swing
public opinion against us and want to go for our jugular, especially
the law courts.
The plots by the security forces have thickened to carry out series of
attacks of such a large scale and proportions that will be
subsequently attributed to the Movement, starting from the course of
our peaceful activities using their agents within. In that way, they
hope to associate the peaceful campaigns to free Sheikh Zakzaky with
violence, and from there, the security forces will take it from there
and escalate it to the scale and scope they desire. This two-faced
machination of the Security to pretend they are working to enforce
peace and security while in fact they mean evil is very much known to
us.
We want to unequivocally state for the umpteenth times that the use of
violence is never in our character. Our leader, Sheikh Zakzaky has
categorically said times without numbers that we are out to save lives
and not to destroy them. He said anytime you here a shot and it is
said to be coming from our direction, you should know that it is fake
news as we do not use weapons or violent tactics to achieve our goals.
This has been clearly demonstrated in the present Free Zakzaky
campaigns since the brutal massacre of over a thousand of our innocent
members and the illegal detention of our leader and hundreds of his
followers for the past two years. For sometimes now we have been
staging peaceful protest marches and sit-outs in Abuja to press home
our demand for the freedom of our revered Leader Sheikh Zakzaky, his
wife and several others in detention since the Zaria massacre of
December 2015. We have not for once resorted to the use of terror
tactics. This is not about to change.
We therefore reject any form of violence or use of terror tactics in
our name. The Islamic Movement is not and should not be held
responsible for any breech of peace or violence that will result from
any false-flag plots. We will continue to employ all lawful, legal and
constitutional means as we have done throughout these two years of
state-perpetrated persecution to achieve our goals, and would not be
blackmailed into submission or surrender. Our timely rallies,
processions and campaign activities will continue as at when due and
in our ways without fear of intimidation.
Rather than beat about the bush toying with ideas of how to link
innocent people with violence and thereby further shed innocent blood,
the government should immediately free our leader and his wife, whose
health is deteriorating by the day.
SIGNED BY
IBRAHIM MUSA
PRESIDENT MEDIA FORUM OF ISLAMIC MOVEMENT IN NIGERIA
Skype: ibrahim.musa42
