The Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has raised fresh concerns over the health condition of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his wife Malama Zeenah Ibraheem, which it said is seriously deteriorating.
Abdullahi Muhammad Musa, who spoke, yesterday, in Abuja, at a briefing for the Academic Forum of the Islamic Movement, restated call for Zakzaky’s release, saying someone in his critical condition should not remain in incarceration.
He queried the rationale behind Zakzaky’s imprisonment, when there is bullet shrapnel in his body, which he said continues to cause more harm to his already worsening situation.
He said: “It is not implausible that there are some sinister motives behind the regime’s insistence on keeping him in the highly congested jail in Kaduna. How else can the regime’s actions be explained?
“Take for instance the aborted trip to India. From the beginning, after the travel permit was granted by a court, moves were made by government to frustrate it, if not for Sheikh Zakzaky’s family members who dug in their heels to ensure that the trip actually took place.”
Musa recalled an agreement with the court order and presidential approval for the journey to India, where the government was to only supervise.
He alleged that instead of doing what was required, the government moved to seize control of the trip, issuing orders ranging from an insistence that half a dozen security operatives, including a police doctor accompanied them, to restraining the number of family members that could join them, to sabotaging the whole trip.
This, among other things, he said, amounted to compromising Zakzaky and his wife’s health and security.
He further narrated that as Zakzaky arrived India August13, 2019, he was welcomed into a tight and hostile security dragnet, in addition to alleged deceitful reception at the airport and the hospital concourse, which culminated in the refusal to allow his personal physicians access to him.
“Even the team of doctors that came to Nigeria for the investigation and review of his case were refused access to him. Instead, they were substituted with very unusual set of unfamiliar doctors that acted in ways that caused the sheikh and his wife to become suspicious.
“The situation being like that, no sane person would have allowed the strange elements to examine him under such unwonted gloom, and the Sheikh demanded an audience with his trusted doctors before anything could be done. This reasonable request was turned down outright,” he explained.
Upon return, Zakzaky and his wife, he alleged, were transferred to an unhealthy prison in Kaduna, where doctors lack proper access and even facilities to handle their cases. This, he further alleged, is trailed with sinister motive in effort by government to put finishing touches to what it had started.
He noted that while Zakzaky has already suffered two strokes in detention, his wife suffers from severe arthritis in her knee joints, which her doctors have said could only be treated with knee replacement surgery. That was three years ago.
“She also has loose fragments of bullet pieces in her abdominal area, which cause a large number of episodes of periodic life-threatening complications with her organs. The wheel chair-bound mother of nine is hypertensive. Even one of the ailments suffered by either of them constitutes a very serious medical emergency, let alone a combination of all of them,” Musa lamented.
He said the IMN insists on the unconstitutional release of Zakzaky and his wife.
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