‘Dangerous lies in public space have consequences,’ says El-Rufai’s son Bashir days after Dadiyata’s disappearance
By Ishaya Ibrahim
An old tweet by Bashir El-Rufai has resurfaced to challenge former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s claim that Abubakar Idris, popularly known as Dadiyata was not a critic of his administration.
In an interview on Arise Television on Friday, February 13, 2026, El-Rufai denied any link to Dadiyata’s disappearance, insisting the social media activist was a critic of the Kano State government under former Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, not Kaduna.
He said: “Dadiyata is a critic of the Kano government. He was a fierce critic of the Kano state government. He’s from Kano. He lives in Kaduna and lectures at a university in Katsina State. It was Ganduje that was his problem. I don’t even know him. We only got a report of Dadiyata’s existence after his family reported to the police that he was abducted. That is the only thing I know, but it was not a problem for Kaduna State.”
However, a December 23, 2019, tweet from Bashir El-Rufai (@BashirElRufai) posted about four and a half months after Dadiyata vanished, appeared to mock those campaigning for justice under the hashtag #WhereIsDadiyata.
Bashir wrote: “The same clowns who encouraged him when he was creating false stories and capitalizing on lies that could endanger lives solely for political ends are the same individuals trending hashtags asking #WhereisDadiyata. Dangerous lies in the public space have consequences.”
Dadiyata, a vocal social media critic, disappeared on August 2, 2019, when unidentified gunmen abducted him from his home in Barnawa, Kaduna. Despite widespread calls for investigation, including from civil society groups, his whereabouts remain unknown more than six years later.
