TheCable

The Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) has accused Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna,  of incitement.

Yakubu Kuzamani, national public relation officer of the union, said this in reaction to a comment credited to el-Rufai.

While speaking on ‘The Stream’, a programme on Aljazeera, el-Rufai said 800 people were killed in southern Kaduna during the 2011 post-presidential election violence.

Kuzamani said the governor gave the “false figure” of 800 for the purpose of “demonising” the people of southern Kaduna.

“The truth of the matter is that the figure of 800 people killed, given by the governor as those killed in southern Kaduna was for the entire 12 northern states of this country where the crisis erupted,” he said.

“But for the governor to say something different shows he is working to incite people against us.”

According to him, a report by the human rights watch gave 800 as number of people killed in 12 northern states.

He explained that the human rights watch arrived at 800 from “55 interviews with witnesses and victims of the violence, christian and Muslim clerics, traditional leaders, police officials, civil society leaders and journalists”.

“Lastly, we refer the governor to a book, the ‘2011 Election Violence in Nigeria’, written by Dr. Nkwachukwu Orji and Nkiru Uzodi and published by Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC),” he said.

“In chapter 3 of the book under the sub-head ‘Deaths’, page 44, the governor would find out that he changed the narratives against the people of southern Kaduna by giving a figure that is for 12 states and not even Kaduna state alone.

Kuzamani said instead of performing his constitutional role of protecting southern Kaduna people from attacks, el-Rufai “has tried to paint us as the aggressors by his constant referral to killings in southern Kaduna”.

He asked the governor to retract the figures given and tender an unreserved apology to the people of southern Kaduna for his “hate speeches against them.”