The Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria (SCSN) has attributed the unending crisis in southern Kaduna to failure by the government to execute General Zamani Lekwot (rtd.), the late Maj. James Kude and others sentenced to death over the 1992 Zangon Kataf crisis.
It, therefore, called on the government to revisit the sentence.
The Secretary of SCSN, AbdurRahman Hassan, urged that those sentenced to death, but pardoned by the military administration of General Sani Abacha, should be executed in the current dispensation, for peace to reign in the region.
“We want those pardoned in 1992 during the Zango Kataf crisis to be executed now, because that is the only way peace will return to the area,” Hassan said.
Then Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, had set up a tribunal headed by the late Justice Pius Okadigbo to try Lekwot, Kude and other Kataf indigenes on allegation of culpable homicide in bloody crisis in 1992.
The Okadigbo tribunal had sentenced Lekwot, Kude, Yohanna Kibori, Marcus Mamman, Yahaya Duniya and Julius Dabo to death by hanging for complicity in the crisis.
But Lekwot and others were later granted state pardon by Abacha on assumption of office.
The council argued: “Till now, Zonkwa is still a ghost town. Surprisingly, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Southern Kaduna People’s Union (SOKAPU) and their allies had never cried foul in the massacre of innocent, law-abiding citizens on the account of their faith. Many more ethno-religious crises continued to occur in Kasuwan Magani, Kajuru, Zangon Kataf and some other places.
“After every crisis, a commission of inquiry would be formed; report would be submitted to the government of the day, to no avail.”