Nigeria plays with religious fire

In December 2015 a fracas involving followers of the radical Shia cleric Ibrahim el-Zakzaky and a convoy carrying Nigeria’s chief of army staff degenerated into a bloodbath. By the end of it, soldiers had slaughtered 347 members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, including women and children, and buried them in mass graves.

Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenah Ibrahim, suffered multiple gunshot wounds. They survived but were detained incommunicado until a brief appearance on Saturday designed to quash rumours that they were dead.

It would be hard to devise a more self-defeating approach to the challenges posed by Zakzaky’s movement. It has tarnished the elected government of President Muhammadu Buhari and heightened concerns about the conduct of the Nigerian army.

More worryingly, the detention of Zakzaky and his wife — in defiance of a 2016 high court ruling ordering their release — has fuelled fear and resentment among the Shia minority. It is not necessary to look far into Nigeria’s past to see the dangerous effect of such government behaviour.

The 2009 killing by police of hundreds of Boko Haram members and execution in custody of their leader, Muhammed Yusuf, led to a more violent faction taking over the group. Nigeria is still struggling to quash the insurgency that has raged since. Government officials complain that Zakzaky and his followers respect neither the constitution nor the writ of federal and regional institutions. Persecuting them is unlikely to change that.

Instead, the government should order Zakzaky’s release and bring evidence of wrongdoing to charge him, if it has it. It should also heed the advice of a judicial inquiry and hold those soldiers responsible for the 2015 killings to account. One of the greatest challenges facing the Nigerian government is in establishing the rule of law.

Holding dissidents without trial is no way to go about it. It shows contempt for the very laws that underpin the authority of the state. London, January 17