The Kano State Police Command has given the reason policemen arrested a former Kano State Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Muazu Magaji.
Magaji, a fierce critic of the governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, was arrested by the police in Abuja shortly after granting a live interview on Trust TV in Utako on Thursday night.
He was immediately flown to Kano and spent a night at the Police Command Headquarters in Bompai.
Speaking to Daily Nigerian, an online newspaper on Friday, the spokesperson for the Command, SP Abdullahi Haruna, said the police resorted to arresting Magaji after he refused to honourably submit himself to police for questioning despite several invitations.
Haruna said the police invited Magaji following a directive of the court to investigate him.
The Police spokesperson said, “We are currently investigating charges of defamation of character, intentional insult, injurious falsehood and inciting disturbance against Muazu Magaji.”
Meanwhile, a complaint letter by Ganduje’s lawyers and sighted by our reporter indicated that the letter was addressed to the presiding magistrate of Court 58, Nomansland, Aminu Gambari.
A copy of the formal complaint letter read in part: “We are Solicitors to the Executive Governor of Kano State, His Excellency, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, (hereinafter referred to as “our client”) and on whose behalf we write to directly complain against Muazu Magaji (hereinafter referred to as “the suspect”) for the commission of the grievous offences of Criminal Defamation of Character, Assault, Intentional Insult with the Intent to Provoke Breach of Peace and Inciting Disturbance and Disaffection contrary to inter-alia the provisions of Sections 114, 264 and 399 of the Penal Code Law in force in Kano State, meted on our client.
“As a foundation to our client’s complaint, we are instructed by our client that the suspect posted a picture portraying our client as an immoral and ungodly man engaged in an extra-marital affair with a strange woman whose face appeared in the said picture.
“We are instructed by our client that the said picture had been widely circulated by the suspect on several social media platforms, in a brazen attempt to assassinate the character, goodwill, good name and image of our client, the first citizen of Kano State, which he built for several decades in civil service and in frontline politics in Nigeria.”
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