The Zango Urban Community Development Association (ZOCUDA), a Hausa/Fulani community in the Zangon-Kataf local government area of Kaduna State, has cautioned General Zamani Lekwot to grant a fresh interview revealing the role he played in the 1992 Zangon-Kataf crisis.
The community in its reaction to a recent interview granted Daily Trust newspaper by General Lekwot, pointed out that he was among the indicted culprits that got pardoned in the crisis.
The group, therefore, cautioned Lekwot to desist from granting distorted interviews on the crisis if he is not ready to reveal what actually transpired, adding that, “the biased” interview he recently granted to justify heinous crimes committed against Hausa/Fulani members of the community in the 1992 crisis, of which he played a role, only opens the wound of the past and recalls the trauma and sorrow suffered by the victims and their families.
Challenging Gen. Lekwot to bring his witness about the market he said was the cause of the crisis, Acting Chairman, Board of Trustees of ZOCUDA, Ibrahim Bisallah, said the purported site was an empty land without any infrastructure and no single stall was built by the authority concerned. But relocation was announced impromptu in order to achieve what he described as an ethnic agenda by the then Chairman of the Local Government Area.
The ZOCUDA challenged General Lekwot to conduct another round of interviews to tell the world the “honest and humble truth,” adding that contrary to Gen. Lekwot’s “false” assertion in the interview, the 1992 Zangon Kataf crisis started as a result of the relocation of a new market, which led to an attack on the Atyap community which the General failed to mention its name and the number of casualties. There are enough records in ZOCUDA archives to enlighten the public of the roles played by all the parties, the group claimed.
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According to Bisallah, General Lekwot needs to go for counselling on human relations and psychology and desist from granting an interview on the Zangon-Kataf crisis of 1992 because the more he speaks of it, the more he reawakens the trauma and sorrow of the victims.
He argued that not only were General Lekwot’s responses uncoordinated, but they resonated with deliberate mischief, distortion of facts and misinformation. “As you rightly stated, you were tried, convicted and pardoned, but you were wrong in claiming you were framed for a crime you never committed. For somebody of your standing, a retired General belonging to a clique in Nigeria that is hardly caught on the wrong side of the law, if you were not culpable, the truth would have set you free. The world would have come to your rescue. You would not have been indicted by a Commission of Enquiry and Tribunal both headed by Christians like you.
“The people of Zangon Kataf especially the Hausa-Fulani Community would like to wonder what exactly you set out to achieve by this interview at this critical time when the nation is in a desperate search for peaceful co-existence among its people in the face of the protracted insecurity…especially in Zangon Kataf, Southern Kaduna and Kaduna State in general.
“Perhaps it could have been an opportunity for you to tender an unreserved apology to the widows, the orphans and the relatives of the hundreds that were maimed and killed as well as the tens of thousands of the Hausa/Fulani you and your kinsmen displaced and sent out as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in a continuing onslaught that has lasted about 31 years,” he said.
