John Danfulani’s Arrest: Separating Fact From Fiction, By MG Maigamo

By presenting this exposition, I am not envisaging any consequence patterning Sub judice; despite that I have a stake in the whole case, but because this very Law of Sub judice which placed restrictions on public discussions forced me to keep quite.

But while I complied and remained studied silence since the case still subsists in the Court, another ‘court of public opinion’ (Social media) has just been awash with varied commentaries on the Danfulani arrest to the extent that the actual fact and the content of the case is being misrepresented.

It is in view of this misrepresentation that I decided to make an exposition on why John Danfulani was arrested.

Meanwhile, lately, there has been an attempt by some sponsored groups to distort the real fact about why Danfulani was arrested. They occupied our social media space with a hashtag #FreeJohnDanfulani and try to change the narrative to give it a different coloration, to look like a political persecution in order to garner sympathy. A usual way of failed people who failed to achieve their evil machinations. These people are now busy peddling false narrative of why he was arrested and false account of what truly transpired. They now adopt a strategy that they think can whip up sentiment easily and will get popular appeal, i.e Danfulani was arrested because he was criticizing the government of Elrufai. Though nobody is buying into their farce, still I find it necessary to provide the public with proper perspective on Danfulani arrest.

Sometime around December last year, we woke up to see that Kaduna state social media space was hyper-saturated with distasteful commentaries as a fallout of John Danfulani’s article titled “APC Simpleton of Northern Nigeria”, followed by another one titled “Our problem in Nigeria”.

These two articles in question were laced with inciteful, hateful, spiteful and bigoted statements; carefully choreographed and dutifully posted on Facebook by Danfulani in a deliberate attempt to cause crises in the state.

However also, on that very week he made another post in sequence which can be interpreted as his stepping stone toward perfecting his grand plan of causing crises in the state. He wrote thus “Petrol everywhere. A few days after Xmas, right? The minster of petrol must have created the fuel scarcity during Xmas to punish Christians. Provide contrary facts”. The statement meant that Buhari as the Minister of Petroleum as he were then, deliberately created acute shortage of petrol during Christmas just to punish Christians. Such grave statement coming out from the mouth of a teacher, a PhD holder and a Christian? And in a volatile state like Kaduna? The outcome would be easily determined.

Though, he has been doing this over the years (which we shall see shortly) but this one he did was premeditated because the platform he chose to spew those unpalatable statements was Facebook where we have more than 16 million unrestrained users. And people responded very well on these articles not in Kaduna alone, but people from other states, especially from those states that the said article made reference to. And who ever read the commentaries and replies on these posts knows there was a looming danger because red-flag had already been raised. Some Christians and Muslims started desecrating each other’s religion and their holy books. And from the pattern of the unrestrained comments one could have possibly seen a minefield being planted and ready to explode.

It was on the strength of this, that I and other like minds who have the interest of our state at heart and who are with the conscious of the past crises in the state, we’d decided to inform our security agencies of what was really happening before it became too late. We wrote a letter of complaint to the Commissioner of Police and copied other relevant agencies, including KASU.

Incidentally, on submitting a copy to the Kaduna State University, we met some group of students murmuring in discordant voices, our curiosities drove us to them and surprisingly heard them lamenting about those particular posts of Danfulani and vowed to take serious action against him.

And if not the security agencies acted fast by arresting him, only God knows what would have happened in our dear state. You can only imagine the scale of the crises.

And funny enough, because of the fact he and his handlers possessed a very low IQ, they have been coming up with flimsy excuses. At first he deactivated his both Facebook and Tweeter accounts and his handlers said that his account had been hacked, while they had forgotten that he confirmed to the Premiumtimes (on Jan, 27 2016) the authorship of the Facebook post. He then backtracked again and denied that he wrote anything like that.
Danfulani’s proclivity for stoking the embers of ethno-religious crises in Kaduna is historical. His famous “Attack the Attacker theory …an all- out war against murderers” during Kaduna crises of 2012 is still fresh in our memories.

In 2012, there was bomb explosions at Wusasa Zaria and Tirkaniya Kaduna and all of the sudden the “Attack the Attacker messages was circulated, and before you knew it many Muslim Shoe shiners and Okada riders were attacked and killed at Sabon Tasha area. The reprisal killings was even worst in Gonin-Gora, along Abuja road. Because many Darika Muslims who were to come back from Maulud in Niger state, were caught in the middle of that unaware and killed, maimed and burnt, all because of this “attack the attacker theory allegedly emanated from John Danfulani.

It also stands to reason that he wanted another crises in the state with those Facebook postings because at the end of that article “APC Simpletons of Northern Nigeria” he particularly mentioned again “attack the attacker, and let skies fall”. Apparently this might be a signal code.

John’s bigotry and hate is so pronounced that in 2013, he wrote another article titled “Owners of the North thought us hate, we are demonstrating to them that we aren’t”. As true-to type, the article was nothing but diatribe against one ethnic group and was tantamount to creating an uncontrolled situation. Because he abused late Sardauna and what he stood for. Let me quote in parts. “Tell to the world that Sir Ahmadu Bello’s dissimulative dictum of ONE NORTH ONE DESTINY is a science of suppression, oppression and exploitation of the Northern Minorities, Christians…” and continued “…let those living in dusty and terrorist entry routes in Kano, Katsina, Borno, Jigawa, sokoto know that, no imported force can defeat Southern Kaduna …”

Actually, Danfulani has been hiding under the banner of “Southern Kaduna Struggle” as convenient way of whipping up sentiment which he had been doing since his University days. But he has been doing it not for the struggle’s sake but in order to acquire political/material benefit. He is nothing but a self-serving egocentric lot who perfected the art of grandstanding.

Southern Kadunas’ issues and challenges have become a profitable business for him which he used as a bait to enrich himself. The entire zone was reduced to merchandize for sale by him. And that was how he has been bullying previous administrations to get patronage. He commodified the entire zone and its people at their own expense. And just because of their need for political correctness, and just because they wanted to maintain the rigging structure in Southern Kaduna, the successive administrations never apprehended Danfulani for all what he had been doing, (what that could be considered as a potential security threat to the state). They instead been rewarding him with political appointments and other patronages.

When this government came on board Elrufai has made it clear that rule of law must be upheld and reemphasized that even if his children break the law they must be punished.
That must have irked Danfulani. He attempted to use the normal tricks, but this time around he failed because the good people of Southern Kaduna denounced him in unison. They belied the claim that he was speaking in their stead.

And after he failed in that and since the governor refused to be bullied, he now resorted to beating drum of war with his divisive and spiteful postings in the social media.

Meanwhile, as we all know that Kaduna has become a hotspot for ethno-religious crises in which any small thing can ignite it. It is incumbent on all of us lovers of peaceful coexistence in the state to stand up collectively and weed out people like Danfulani in our society, irrespective of where one comes from or which religion he subscribes to. Because no one needs to be told the effect of crises in Kaduna and no one would wish to see another one yet, as the peace we all sought for was not easy to come by. And John was trying to destroy the string that holds the fiber of our peaceful coexistence in the state.

Therefore contrary to some online news report that John was arrested for criticizing the governor, this is the fact.

Mukhtar Garba Maigamo
mgmaigamo@yahoo.com
2/11/2016