Nigeria Shias victim of Saudi-backed violence: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire in Detroit, to discuss the recent remarks by Ibrahim Musa, the spokesman for the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), saying 730 people have gone missing since the Nigerian army’s attack on Shia Muslims on December 12, 2015.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why do you think we are not actually hearing an outcry for what is happening in Nigeria? Why has there not been a response from the Nigerian government?

Azikiwe: The Nigerian government has not given any sound response or explanation as to why the Islamic Movement of Nigeria was attacked over a month ago. We have to keep in mind that this is a very repressive regime, even though it is now ostensibly headed by a civilian government. The head of state there, President Muhammadu Buhari, is a former military general; he had been in power before between 1983 and 1985 as a result of a military coup d'etat.

So it is still a very repressive state that exists there and people are quite disturbed about what has happened; there has been no reasonable explanation given. They claim that the movement was blocking a highway and that this highway was being utilized by the top Nigerian military official in Kaduna state and that there was the threat of assassination, but no concrete evidence has been presented that there was any conspiracy to assassinate this general or any other type of conspiratorial actions on the part of the IMN.

Press TV: We know that hundreds were killed and Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky himself is detained by these Nigerian forces and yet, 730 others are also missing. Why are we not hearing any reaction from the international community to what has happened there? And why is not an investigation being led to see what was the reason for the attack?

Azikiwe: There have been demonstrations in various countries around the world, including Pakistan, in Iran as well as other states, and this of course is something that they are trying to link to the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast. But there is no connection.

And the question is why are they attacking the Islamic Movement of Nigeria at this point? We have to look at what is going in regard to the severing of relations between at least three African states and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sudan, which had had close ties with Tehran, has broken diplomatic relations; Somalia as well as Djibouti.

I think it has a lot to do with the influence of Saudi Arabia and their allies in putting pressure on these African states to break and also to minimize relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. These are some of the factors that are involved, but the government has given no solid explanation in regard to what has happened. 

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