Governor, Nasir El-Rufai.
The Kaduna state branch of Muslim Lawyers Association of
Nigeria (MULAN) has announced its withdrawal from the forthcoming
annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association over the
dis-invitation of the State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, as one of the
Speakers at the conference.
At a press conference in Kaduna on Saturday, the group through
its Chairman, Abbas Masanawa, noted that the decision of the NBA
National Executive Committee to rescind an invite based on
unsubstantiated allegations and without fair hearing from the
Governor was deemed as parochial, sentimental and tainted with
favoritism and ethnoreligious considerations.
READ ALSO: We Didn’t Disinvite El-Rufai For
Ethnic, Religious Reasons – Usoro
The Muslim lawyers also wondered why the NBA chose to keep
silent in the face of the killings going on in the northeast,
Katsina, Zamfara, Niger and Birnin Gwari, in Kaduna state but chose
to give surreptitious ethnic cover to the southern Kaduna attacks,
as if lives matter more in some parts of the country over
others.
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Speaking further, the group wondered why the NBA invited
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state to speak at the conference in
spite of his past utterances where he described Rivers as a
Christian state but decided to dis-invite El-Rufai.
According to them, the NBA conference would have afforded
lawyers the platform to interrogate Governor El-Rufai on some of
the allegations leveled against him by some members of the
association, rather than shutting him out after inviting him to the
event earlier.
The group insisted that based on the NBA NEC decision, it is
left with no option than to instruct its members across Kaduna
state to withdraw their participation in the Association’s
forthcoming conference.