Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) yesterday replied Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai on the stringent conditions given its leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, for seeking medical treatment abroad.

The Shiites said their leader would not flee the country like El-Rufai did under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua administration in 2007 but would return to Nigeria after the treatment.

According to the chairman of Free El-Zakzaky Campaign Organisation, Sheikh Abdurrahman Abubakar, the IMN leader is a bona fide citizen and therefore cannot abandon his fatherland to seek political asylum in a foreign land.

El-Rufai had on Wednesday given new conditions to the embattled leader of IMN and his wife for seeking medical treatment in India.

This followed the ruling of a Kaduna High Court presided over by Justice Darius Khobo on Monday permitting the IMN leader and wife to travel to India for treatment of injuries they sustained during IMN’s clash with the army on December 15, 2015.

According to the Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Mr. Samuel Aruwan, conditions to be met before the embattled Shiite leader and wife could travel included, “the confirmation of his appointment with the hospital by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; an undertaking by the defendants to produce two prominent and reliable persons as sureties, one being a first-class chief/emir of national repute and the other a prominent person within Kaduna State who shall undertake to produce the defendants whenever they are needed.”

The state also wanted the Federal Government to extract from India the promise that El-Zakzaky won’t seek asylum under any guise while there, among others.

However, Abubakar told journalists yesterday in Kaduna that Nigerians would not forget in a hurry how the current governor fled the country in 2007.

This was just as he revealed that arrangements were already in place to fly their embattled leader and the wife to India for medical treatment as pronounced by the Kaduna High Court.

He said: “The issue is that the judge (Khobo) has already given an order, and the Department of State Services (DSS) has already received the order and will comply.

“We see no reason the Kaduna government will now come up with other conditions.”

• Source: The Guardian, August 9, 2019