Don’t Hold Procession Saturday, Police Warn Shiites

From the police force, Thursday came another warning to the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) which the security outfit accused of planning to perpetrate illegality.

It gave the warning in a reaction to the group’s plan to hold its yearly Arbaeen procession Saturday, saying: “Since it (IMN) is proscribed, the police as a law enforcement agencies won’t sit and look at people take the laws into their hands.”

A spokesman for the police in Kaduna State, Yakubu Sabo, said: “It is our primary responsibility to enforce the law of the land. The Federal Government of Nigeria has proscribed them. You are also aware that the state government proscribed them too. So, if they are proscribed, you can anticipate what the police will do when they are seen engaging in any activities in the name of IMN.

“Anybody who disregards this warning will definitely be dealt with in accordance with law.”

But IMN gave no indication it would back down, insisting instead that the procession would be peaceful.

Members of the group clashed with security operatives in Abuja during last year’s edition of the trek.

“Soldiers began to fire. They targeted protesters fleeing the chaos. Many of the injured were shot in the back or legs as they sought for where to duck and hide. Some were shot at close range on the head, chest and stomach,” recounted the president of IMN’s Media Forum, Mallam Ibrahim Musa, in a statement yesterday.

He, however, dispelled concerns that the march could turn violent: “We would like to assure the general public that this year’s Arbaeen, as usual, will be peaceful and devoid of any attempt to disrupt the right of safe passage to other road users. There is no cause for alarm over the Arbaeen trek.”

He reiterated the group’s demand for the release of its leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, “who has now spent four years in an illegal and unconstitutional detention, despite a valid order from a court of competent jurisdiction ordering his release. We will not rest on our oars until the revered Sheikh, his wife and others in illegal detention since December 2015 are set free.”

The purpose of the symbolic trek, Musa explained, “is to recall and experience the trial and tribulation faced by the household of the Holy Prophet, who were chained and dragged in the heat of the desert barefooted from Karbala in Iraq to Damascus in Syria after the killing of Imam Husain, 61 years after Hijra.”