By Ishaya Ibrahim
Twenty killed, 30 injured in the last two days. Yet, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), the Shiite sect that has a history of clashes with the military, says the protest continues.
The protest started on Sunday, October 28. The body count was four after the army says the use of lethal force became unavoidable to stop the sect members from seizing a truckload of weapon they were transporting.
The following day, 16 other members were gunned down. Today, one person suffered the same fate.
Dr Shuaibu Musa, spokesman for the group told Political Platform, a radio programme of Ray Power that the protest would continue despite the deaths being inflicted on its members.
“We will continue to protest. And by the way, yesterday was not even a protest. It was a religious mourning procession. And if you are aware of what Shiite is all about, you’ll see that at this moment today, its done in many other places where Shiite predominates. If you go to Iraq today, there are more than 20 million adherents doing this trek,” he said.
On the charge by the Army that the procession was violent, he denied.
“If you are walking peacefully and someone comes to shoot at you, what will you do? Are you going to raise up your hand and say shoot me? The natural thing is that you will defend yourself with whatever you have. It was at that point that some of them started throwing stones at the military. Everybody saw the procession before the attacks,” he said.
He said how could the military accuse them of violence when the procession started from Suleja, down to Zuba where they passed several checkpoints and police stations without any incident?
“Our people left from Suleja in Niger State and came all the way to Zuba, and passed several checkpoints including the police station at Madalla. It was peaceful. You cannot expect a situation where people are marching peacefully, including women and children and then you come and open fire on them and you expect them to just bare their chest. That is very wrong,” he said.
He said their procession does not create traffic gridlock because they walk by the side of the road, have their own traffic officials who control the procession.
“We don’t have hoodlums in our typical processions. You’ll see some people wearing reflective jacket by the way. Those ones are there to control traffic and to keep the procession organised. Anybody we identified that is trying to cause confusion, is being taken out and dealt with,” he said.