Okadigbo tribunal, not Niki Tobi, sentenced Zamani Lekwot to death- Sharia Council
The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria at the weekend said it was the late Justice Pius Okadigbo tribunal on the 1992 Zangon-Kataf riots that found retired General Zamani Lekwot and 16 others guilty of killings in Southern Kaduna, not the Niki Tobi commission of inquiry as erroneously reported recently.
But retired Major General Zamani Lekwot has said he is not afraid of death, and that his life is in the hands of God and not the Muslim scholars.
He said, “What Nigeria needs at this moment is genuine tolerance, regardless of ethnic or religious affinities and not hatred. My life is not in the hands of the Muslim scholars but in the hands of God, I have nothing to say.”
The council, in a statement, had maintained that the solution to ending the persistent violence in southern Kaduna was to execute Lekwot and others to serve as a deterrent to others.
The Justice Okadigbo tribunal, set up by the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida military regime, had sentenced Lekwot and others to death by hanging for complicity in the Zangon-Kataf violence but the death sentence was commuted to a jail sentence before Lekwot received a state pardon in 1995 by the regime of late General Sani Abacha.
The Kaduna State Secretary of the Supreme Council for Sharia in
Nigeria, Engineer Abdulrahman Hassan, while addressing newsmen, said attributing the decision to Niki Tobi commission was an oversight.
He maintained that the pardon granted General Lekwot and others after they were found guilty by late Justice Okadigbo tribunal was responsible for the continuous killings in Southern Kaduna.
Responding, Major General Zamani Lekwot (rtd), a former Military Governor of old Rivers State, said he was not afraid of death.
Lekwot spoke with journalists in an interview shortly after the interdenominational service and indoor protest organised by the state chapter of Christian Association of Nigerian (CAN) on Sunday.
He further said that all genuine religious leaders are supposed to preach love and wondered why the council is preaching hate and division in the country.
“The Zangon-Kataf they are talking about, yes, the killings were unfortunate, but the dispute was the relocation of a market. Some people didn’t want it, and at the end of the day, a commission of inquiry was set up; recommendations were made and the Mua’azu Committee’s recommendations have been implemented.
“Those that are reverting to it are clever by half. What we need in our country is genuine tolerance; we have lived together for a very long time,” he said.