Hottestgistnaija.com
The State Security Service on Monday detained a former FCT minister, Malam Nasir El-Rufai at its headquarters in Abuja when he honoured the summons extended to him for making an inciting statement.
El-Rufai who had evaded arrest for three days, arrived at the SSS office around 9.20am accompanied by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State who drove him, and Senator Chris Ngige.
Other party chieftains, including the National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Tijani Tumsah, were barred from entering the premises with him.
One of his wives and his lawyer were also part of the entourage that went with him to the Maitama office of the secret police.
Amaechi said he was mandated by the leadership of the APC to accompany the ex-minister.
The governor spent about an hour inside the SSS premises before he left for another appointment.
Ngige who spent about four hours left the SSS premises around 3pm. Attempts to speak with him by journalists was aborted by SSS operatives who asked everyone to leave the area.
The SSS had invited El-Rufai, the interim deputy Publicity Secretary of the APC to its office last Friday over a statement credited to him in which he said there would be violence in the 2015 elections.
But the former minister declined to honour the summons, saying he had instituted a suit against the service for detaining him during the governorship elections in Anambra state. He asked the agency to meet him in his office or it should produce a warrant of arrest.
El-Rufai in an interview with journalists moments before he entered the SSS office, explained that he did not honour the invitation earlier as there was no warrant, adding that the SSS had no power to compel him to come to their office because of the statement he made.
He argued that the invitation is an attempt to silence the opposition.
“The SSS has provided the warrant of arrest and shown it to my lawyer on Friday and I said to my lawyer that we will come here this morning (Monday).
“It is all about politics, it is all about 2015, this is just an attempt to intimidate and silence opposition for crying out that elections are likely to be rigged; I will continue to speak and they will continue to arrest me until we get free and fair election in Nigeria,” he said.
The diminutive politician said that he had the right under the country’s constitution to make the statement for which he was invited, adding that rigging of elections in the country had always resulted in violence.
“There is nothing I have said that history has not shown; I said elections should be free and fair, if they are not free and fair, there is likelihood of violence. This has happened in our history in 1964, 1983, 1993 and 2011, so what is strange about that. Anybody that doesn’t know that is either not reading history or just ignoring history,’’ the APC chieftain insisted.
El-Rufai remained defiant even while inside the SSS office as he tweeted to his followers,”inside SSS hq. They are now saying Governor Amaechi and Senator Ngige will not be allowed into the building after walking 500 metres….impunity.”
