MURIC Calls Northern Lawyers To Boycott NBA Conference After El-Rufai Removal

The Muslim Rights Concern has expressed dissatisfaction for withdrawing its invitation from Kaduna State Governor to speak at the Nigerian Bar Association Annual General Conference.

The group in a statement on Friday through it’s Founder and Director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola also called on lawyers from the North to boycott the conference

It described the NBA’s action as parochial, myopic and jejune.

“NBA yesterday dropped Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State from the list speakers at its Virtual AGC which is billed to start on 26th August, 2020.

It is high level prejudice. NBA as a group of learned literati should know better. It is parochial, myopic and jejune.

“The fact that NBA took the ill-advised step on account of a petition written by a group, Open Bar Initiative whose main fear is expressed as ‘One can be sure that he will also use the given platform to advance his conflated narrative, designed to deceive and confuse the nation on the real causes of the killings’ exposes NBA’s impatience, intolerance and self-conceit.

“Is it not better to hear him out than to lock him out? Is it not better to jaw-jaw than to war-war? The departure of the ambassador, they say, is the beginning of war.

By dropping El-Rufai, NBA has declared war on the other side in the Southern Kaduna crisis. By so doing, it lost a golden chance to be part of the solution to the conflict. NBA has elected to be part of the problem.

“Was it not Jane Goodall who said, ‘Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right’? Change cannot come through rejection and exclusion.