Kaduna Muslim lawyers to boycott NBA conference over withdrawal of El-Rufai’s invitation

By CHIMEZIE ENYIOCHA 

The Kaduna State branch of Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria (MULAN) has announced its withdrawal from the forthcoming annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association over the dis-invitation of the State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, as one of the Speakers at the conference.

At a press conference in Kaduna on Saturday, the group through its Chairman, Abbas Masanawa, noted that the decision of the NBA National Executive Committee to rescind an invite based on unsubstantiated allegations and without fair hearing from the Governor was deemed as parochial, sentimental and tainted with favoritism and ethnoreligious considerations.

The Muslim lawyers also wondered why the NBA chose to keep silent in the face of the killings going on in the northeast, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger and Birnin Gwari, in Kaduna state but chose to give surreptitious ethnic cover to the southern Kaduna attacks, as if lives matter more in some parts of the country over others.

Speaking further, the group wondered why the NBA invited Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state to speak at the conference in spite of his past utterances where he described Rivers as a Christian state but decided to dis-invite El-Rufai.

According to them, the NBA conference would have afforded lawyers the platform to interrogate Governor El-Rufai on some of the allegations leveled against him by some members of the association, rather than shutting him out after inviting him to the event earlier.

The group insisted that based on the NBA NEC decision, it is left with no option than to instruct its members across Kaduna state to withdraw their participation in the Association’s forthcoming conference. (Channels TV)