Release our leader, wife, El-Zakzaky supporters urge Buhari

The Shi’ite Islamic Movement in Nigeria has accused the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari of undermining the rule of law.

According to the group, some  actions of the  administration, regarding obedience to the judgment of the court, shows that it has placed itsself above the law.

A statement by Sheikh Abdulhamid Bello Zaria on behalf of the Islamic movement, in protest of the two years incarceration of its leader, Sheikh  Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenatu by the federal government, said the movement will not relax until its leader and his wife are set free to attend to their deteriorating health.

El-Zakzaky and his wife have been in detention since December 12, 2015, after members of the sect encountered the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai in a shoot out.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja had, last year ordered the unconditional release of the Islamic leader and his wife within 45 days.

The court’s order followed a fundamental right enforcement suit El-Zakzaky filed against the Federal Government.

The court held that the continued detention of the applicant without trial amounted to a gross violation of his constitutionally guaranteed rights and  went ahead to award N50 million damages against the Federal Government.

The court also ordered the construction of a new accommodation for El-Zakzaky’s family in any part of Kaduna State or the Northern region, having dismissed government’s position that El-Zakzaky and his wife were under “protective custody.”

Sheikh Bello, in the statement at the end of the peaceful protest in Abuja said, since the court had declared that the continued detention of the Islamic leader and his wife is illegal and unconstitutional, government ought to have released them unconditionally as ordered by the court.

“If it were in other democratic climes, since a federal high court has set El-Zakzaky and his wife free since December 2016, they would have been free by now.”

“But, alas, it seems the country is practising a democracy standing on its head,” the movement stated and urging government to release El-Zakzaky and his wife, inline with the judgment of the court.