IMN leader, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky

A nongovernmental organization, the Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency (CESJET) says the proposed book by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, IMN, is capable of jeopardising the ongoing trial of the embattled IMN leader, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife.

The Group filed a suit at the Kaduna state High Court asking for an order to stop the Spokesman of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Ibrahim Musa, from publishing a book on the December 2015 clash between the group and the Army in Zaria which led to loss of many lives and property.

Speaking to reporters shortly after filing an exparte motion at the court, counsel to Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency (CESJET) Edward Omaga, says the Centre views the attempt to publish the book on the alleged massacre of IMN members in Zaria, as an attempt to prove that Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his followers are not guilty even when he and some of his members are being prosecuted in a competent court for various offences by the Kaduna state government.

The group, therefore, wants the court to stop the IMN spokesman from releasing the book for public consumption at the same time when issues are before the court of law, and more so that the IMN has been proscribed by both Kaduna state and the Federal Government.

In the originating summons, the nongovernmental organization wants the court to determine whether by virtue of the report of the judicial commission of inquiry into the clash between IMN and the Nigerian army and the gazetted white paper emanating from it, the IMN was not proscribed and designated as a terrorist group ,and whether Ibrahim Musa is not by writing a book on the IMN attempting to commit an act of terrorism.

The Centre is also asking the court for an order mandating the Kaduna state Commissioner of Police to arrest and prosecute the IMN spokesman for trying to publish the book entitled, “December 2015 Massacre of Shiites in Nigeria: Survivors Accounts” which it says, amounts to trying to dislodge the Nigerian government.

Omaga explains that the centre’s interest is to see that the security of the nation is not threatened under any guise and that members of the public are not allowed to engage in activities capable of inciting people against the government or rubbishing the temple of justice.

However, in a swift reaction, the IMN spokesman, Ibrahim Musa describes the group’s suit as a deliberate attempt to suppress the true account of what happened between Shiites and soldiers in Zaria.

According to him, the nongovernmental organization is one of the groups hired by the Nigerian army to blackmail the IMN and its members by ensuring the proposed book which has survivors’ account does not see the light of the day, adding that no amount of court action or blackmail against the IMN will stop the public presentation of the book.