It’s no longer news that Luka Biniyat ha been incarcerated and now in jail despite his poor health. What was supposed to be a normal court procedure became a charade of the highest order as the judge after the hearing ordered that Luka be remanded in prison until the 20th of July. The judge, by keeping Luka in the prison walls definitely is acting a script carefully put together by Elrufai who is desperate to prove a point that he is Lord of the law and has power to twist our Nigerian constitution to suit his purposes.
Kaduna State, under the leadership of El Rufai has degenerated to an all time low. At the slightest provocation, he deploys executive powers given to him through a mandate. He has mischievously transformed this power into an instrument of coercion and oppression to humiliate and torment citizens of the State, particularly those of the southern extraction, the very same people whose votes he sought to be so elected governor today. These are the same people he seeks to humiliate and it appears to be a hobby and his favorite style.
Months ago, Luka Binniyat was charged to court for publication a story that turned out to be false. He was misled by someone who manufactured the story for purely selfish and pecuniary reasons. It was purely a game plan by the person in question in other to take advantage of his employer and to extort money from him. The employer, as soon as he realised that the story was false, turned his staff to the police and he quickly offered an apology to the government and retracted the story. The governor insisted and had his way with law enforcement agencies until the employer was docked and spent days in prison.
Elrufai’s naivety and blatant disregard for law and due process, led him to arrest and prosecute journalists, lawyers and academics mainly those of them from southern kaduna whom he perceives to be his enemies. Their crime is that they are reporting events in the State as they unfold. This is clearly a manifest breach of fundamental human rights and disregard for the rule of law. El Rufai’s clamp down on journalists and their subsequent arrest, detention and prosecution violates the very basic principle of justice as enshrined in our grand norm. Why should El Rufai arrest and prosecute Luka Binnayat the reporter of the story without prosecuting the carriers of the story which is Vanguard Newspapers?
