Maikori still in trouble as El Rufai ‘targets’ him

The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai is not ready to drop the matter of comments made by Chocolate City boss, Audu Maikori, over the killings in Southern Kaduna.

A week after Mr Mark Jacob, lawyer representing Maikori informed that charges leveled against his client over his controversial comments on the killings in Southern Kaduna were dropped, El-Rufai while speaking at the Lagos Social Media Week Thursday said Maikori ‘‘must suffer for the consequences of his comments’’.

El-Rufai said Maikori will be prosecuted over his misleading tweets on Southern Kaduna attack for posting on his Twitter time-line that five students of the College of Education, GidanWaya in Kaduna state, were ambushed and killed by herdsmen while on their way back to school on January 22nd.

In his comments while addressing the matter, El-Rufai said; “Audu Maikori rushed to publish a false story without checking with anyone. But before then, he had been posting fake pictures by posting Boko Haram attacks, Rwanda genocide as Southern Kaduna killings which elicited a lot of emotions on social media.

“But more than that, what he posted may have led to killings and we are trying to link the dates of the posting to attacks that may have happened the next day on Fulanis and if we are able to establish that causation, as lawyers, we know what it means. It is totally irresponsible to do that.

“And even when pointed out to him that this information is not true that the College of Education does not run a mass communication programme and that the school had been closed down since November, he still posted that he stands by his story.

Read also: Nigerian police drop charges against Choc City boss Maikori

“He questioned the authenticity of the press statement. He was totally and completely irresponsible. He is going to be prosecuted. He was arrested. His statement has been taken. His fate will be decided by a judge. It’s not Nasir El-Rufai. It’s nothing personal.

“I have nothing against him. He has worked with the state government in the past. Since we started going after people that are posting these fake pictures, we have had some sense of moderation. You cannot rush and use a platform like that without checking because there are two sides to this conflict because anything you post can elicit a reaction from one of the sides.

“So we should at least be sure that what we are posting is true. And there are ways of checking, call the police or other authorities. You are rushing to get retweets and followings without regards to the fact that what you are doing could lead to more violence or loss of lives.

“I am the governor of the state. I am not in this game to get following. My responsibility as governor of the state is to ensure the security of lives and property of the state and I will not allow anyone, even my own son, to do that kind of thing without consequence”, El-Rufai said.

Recall that weeks after Maikori apologised and retracted the comments, informing that after carrying out a detailed investigation that involved the police, he found out that his driver who broke the news to him and was in Kaduna at the time of the incident and claimed his brother was also killed, lied to him just to extort money, he was picked up for questioning by the police.

Maikori was however released a day after he was whisked away by security operatives in Lagos who later transferred him to Abuja for questioning, over the comments he made on Twitter.

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