By Femi Macaulay
After the event, it is necessary to revisit the controversy that characterised the event. At the heart of the controversy are issues that need to be clarified. The character at the centre of the controversy should not act as if such clarifications are unnecessary.
It is impossible that Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai is unaware of the damaging allegations against him, in a petition by a group of lawyers known as Open Law Initiative, which possibly informed the decision of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to disinvite him from its 2020Annual General Conference which took place from August 26 to 29.
El-Rufai had been invited by NBA’s Technical Committee on Conference Planning (TCCP) to be a keynote speaker at the milestone 60th anniversary annual general conference. It was a historic event, the NBA’s first virtual annual general conference.
The petition against El-Rufai, addressed to the chair of TCCP, NBA, requested that the organisers should “withdraw the offer of platform” to him. The reasons given for this request remain important, even after the event.
The petitioners had said: “As you may know, on 9 December 2019, Quartz Africa named Governor El-Rufai at the head of a ‘powerful’ group of Nigerian state governors who ‘now regularly use security agents to arrest and intimidate journalists and activists who dare to question their actions or attempt to hold them accountable.’
“One of the most prominent victims of this is University lecturer, Abubakar Idris, better known as Dadiyata, who was abducted from the gate of his house in Barnawa, Kaduna, on 1 August 2019 and has not been seen since then.
“At 10:16 Hours on 23 December 2019, one of Governor El-Rufai’s sons, Bashir, issued a tweet gloating over the disappearance of Dadiyata, in which he signed off with the line ‘Dangerous lines in the public space have consequences.’ The Kaduna State government has not much acted as if the disappearance of Dadiyata is of much concern to it.”
According to the petition, “Many other critics of Governor El-Rufai have been luckier, but only because they ended up in prison or detention. These include university lecturer Dr. John Danfulani. Digital activist, Stephen Kefason, was abducted from his home in Rivers State on the orders of Governor El-Rufai and detained for over five months.
“Luka Biniyat, journalist with Vanguard Newspaper, was also detained and, at the instance of Governor El-Rufai, fired from his job for writing a report the Governor didn’t like. The same thing happened to Segun Onibiyo, another journalist with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN.”
The petitioners also said: “A major focus of the intolerance of Mallam El-Rufai has been lawyers and the legal profession. In 2016, when he was visited by the then President of the Nigerian Bar, A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, Governor El-Rufai threatened to the NBA President to abduct Kaduna lawyer, Ms. Gloria Ballason, because she had criticized him in a news article, a perfectly lawful act of exercising constitutionally protected speech.
“Ms. Ballason sued to protect her rights and in May 2017, secured a judgment of the High Court of Kaduna State, which found that the Governor had indeed violated her rights. The High Court awarded also damages against the Governor. He refused to pay up. Instead, he instigated another round of violations of the rights of Ms. Ballason, instructing the Kaduna State Police Command to blockade her law office in Kaduna at the end of 2019.
“In July 2020, the High Court of Kaduna State presided over by Honorable Justice Hannatu Balogun again found Governor El-Rufai and the Police in Kaduna State under his direction, in violation of the right of Ms. Ballason to practice her vocation as a lawyer. The High Court specifically found that they had violated the United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers.”
They added: “As the proceedings were pending in February 2017 in Ms. Ballason’s case, Governor El-Rufai arranged to abduct one of her clients, Audu Maikori, from Lagos. Mr. Maikori, himself a lawyer of some distinction, was transported to Kaduna on the orders of Mallam El-Rufai, where he was detained and tortured, first at the police before being sent into detention.
“Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have found that the conduct of the Governor constituted egregious violations of the laws and the constitution. There is presently pending an award of N10.5 million against the Governor for the violations inflicted on Audu Maikori. Governor El-Rufai will not comply or pay up.”
Furthermore, the petitioners said: “On the eve of the presidential elections in February 2019, Mallam El-Rufai took to the television to announce on 15 February 2019, that ‘66 Fulanis’ had been massacred in an Adara settlement in Kajuru Local Government Area in Southern Kaduna. The Police as well as the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) denied that any such incident happened.
“When Dr. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, one of our leading members and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, challenged Mallam El-Rufai to provide proof of his claims, the governor sought to procure his abduction with an order in a case that did not have a suit number.”
Are these claims true? “We have set these out factually because we do not wish to be presumptuous,” the petitioners said. They mentioned insecurity in the state and El-Rufai’s alleged unresponsiveness. “As at today, Southern Kaduna is the most active site of massacres and mass atrocities in Nigeria,” they said.
El-Rufai has a lot of explaining to do in the circumstances. Perhaps he would have had an opportunity to address the issues on the NBA platform if he had not been disinvited. But it is not too late to do so after the event. Indeed, it can never be too late to respond to such issues which, according to the petitioners, indicate that “As Governor, Mallam El-Rufai has shown no regard for the rule of law, for human rights or for human beings.”
El-Rufai should respond to the issues raised by the petitioners, which call into question his approach to governance.
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