Only yesterday, the Catholic Church around the country
continued with the recitations of the Unique prayer for Nigeria in distress
composed by the Nigerian Catholic Bishops Conference during the regime of the
military dictator- Late General Sani Abacha.
In Maiduguri , Borno State ,
report has it that in over 90 mosques, the adherent of the Islamic religion
last Friday interceded for the quick recovery and return to work of the
Nigerian President who was only recently described by a foreign press as the
“missing president”.
Buhari originally travelled to London for a ten days medical vacation but
ten days has turned into a full blown Month with no known exact information on
when he would be back to the Country.
But the defining moments that reminds us all that Nigeria is
in very spectacular distress is the weekend's illegal arrest, detention and
belated release of the young Nigerian entrepreneur Mr. Audu Maikori by the police for alleged
incitement following a social media posting he did on the Southern Kaduna
Massacres by the armed Fulani thugs.
Mr. Maikori, a lawyer by training and a leading light in the
Nigerian Music scenes, was arrested in Lagos
around noon Friday by a team of policemen attached to inspector-general
monitoring and intelligence team and was immediately transferred to the Force
Headquarters in Abuja .
Mr. Mark Jacobs, the Legal Counsel to Maikori said the
arrest was in connection with a series of tweets posted by Mr. Maikori about
four weeks ago in which he alleged the killing of some Southern
Kaduna residents by Fulani herdsmen.
But details of the tweets, which Mr. Maikori said were
obtained from his driver, turned out to be false.
Mr. Maikori later retracted and apologized for the false
information. A magistrate in Kaduna
issued a warrant for his arrest, his lawyer said. But it's a notorious fact
that Mr. Audu Maikori was humiliated by the police on the illegal instruction
of the Kaduna state governor only because he is
a Christian from Southern Kaduna and because
he has consistently condemned the atrocious mass murders of his people by armed
Fulani terrorists.
The arrest of this young Nigerian business executive born by
Southern Kaduna parents was sequel to earlier threats by the Kaduna State
governor that he will order the detention of anyone spreading information about
the killings in Southern Kaduna State. It is a well-known fact in a lot of
circle that Nassir El Rufai is an unrepentant ethno-Islamic bigot. He was once
quoted to have tweeted a hate message stating that for every Fulani man killed
the Fulani will not forgive but will decimate many from the community whereby
this killing takes place. El Rufai is not known to have dissociated himself
from this apparent hate message on his tweeter handle.