The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, has kicked against the employment of a southern-based lawyer to prosecute former Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai over a N423 billion fraud.
MURIC accused the government of dragging the North back by a hundred years and criticised it for ignoring all the brilliant legal minds in the region to pick a lawyer from the South-west for the prosecution of the former governor.
A statement by Professor Ishaq Akintola, the group’s Executive Director, read: “We are deeply perturbed by the preoccupation of the Kaduna State Government (KDSG) and its state assembly with the profiling of the immediate past governor of the state, Nasir El-Rufai.
“Most disturbing is the manner the state government ignored all the brilliant minds in the legal profession in the whole North to pick a human rights lawyer from the South-West for the purpose of prosecuting El-Rufai.
“This is a slap in the face of not only legal practitioners in the North but the entire Northern population. It also constitutes a colossal waste of resources as well as an insult and a disservice to the whole North.”
Akintola noted that the decision is contrary to the spirit, culture, and values envisioned great Northern leaders like Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and the political maestro of the North, Alhaji Aminu Kano.
He said: “On our fingers, we can count no less than a dozen legal luminaries nulli secundus of Northern origin. On what grounds were these found unqualified and ineligible? What parameter did KDSG use to pick its prosecutor from a place so far away from the area of jurisdiction of this case?” he queried.
El-Rufai is being prosecuted for allegedly embezzling the sum of N423 billion from the government treasury during his 8-year tenure as governor.