A Kano state committee investigating the September 28 Muslim rioting in Tudun Wada Dankadai learned at public hearings that 19 Christians were killed, but it only reported three deaths in its interim report to state authorities.
The committee, made up of nine Muslims and three Christians, discovered from at least two official sources that 17 Muslims and Islamic preacher Isa Jihad were responsible for starting the violence, but in its report to the state government it sought to blame the disturbance on Christian students.
Inexplicably, in its report to state authorities earlier this month the committee stated that Christian students began the violent rampage when they supposedly became upset that one had converted to Islam.
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The committee also found that the Muslim rampage displaced 350 Christian families and that there is not a single house belonging to a Christian now standing in Tudun Wada Dankadai.
Muslim committee members held that they could report only three killings because the other 16 could not be officially identified. During the attack, 16 victims were buried in a common grave, while three corpses were identified by surviving family members were released to them.
“When we said we should reflect the fact that 19 Christians were killed in our report, the other members who are Muslims refused,” Rev. Dangora told Compass. “What could we have done when we were a minority?”
Rev. Dangora said the committee also refused to document its findings that Muslim preacher Isa Jihad and 17 other Muslims were behind the attack on Christians – even though the names of the perpetrators originally came from the Muslim district head of Tudun Wada, Alhaji Abbas Muhammad.
“Alhaji Abbas Muhammad, while receiving the committee members in his palace, told us that he had given the divisional police officer [DPO], Saidu Idris Jatau, the names of 17 Muslims who were behind the attack on Christians and demanded that the police arrest and prosecute them,” Rev. Dangora told Compass. “But he said that the DPO, being a Muslim, refused to do so.”
When district head Muhammad again appeared before the committee to present it with the 17 names, Rev. Dangora said, “The Muslim members of our committee deliberately refused to include these names in our report.”
Instead, he said, the panel decided to report that Christian students caused the September 28 outbreak in the course of refusing to allow the conversion of a Christian student to Islam.
How strange! It's usually Muslims who get angry when someone converts out of their religion - how unusual to see Christians reacting in this way!
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