By Uche Mbah
It is gradually becoming apparent that the Islamic Movement Of Nigeria, IMN saga has much to do with the rift between two different Islamic groups, the Sunni and the Shiites, with Saudi Arabia and Iran separately backing both parties respectively, making the IMN leader Ibrahim El Zakzaky an anchor point in the struggle for supremacy between the two groups in Nigeria.
IMN has gone to court to challenge the incarceration of El Zakzaky, but the government, in a counter affidavit, has submitted that the IMN has an ultimate goal of Islamizing Nigeria with the backing of Iran. They allege that Iran was the power behind the antics of the Shiite Leader, and that the Iranian government wants a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution that brought Ayotolla Komeini to power, thereby making Iran a Shiite Islamic state.
This Magazine can confirm that the Shiite group has nicknamed El Zakzaky the Ayotlla of Nigeria.
Besides that, the President Muhammadu Buhari led Federal government, which is largely made up of Sunni officials, are allegedly not favorably disposed towards the IMN.
Recall that the Maitasine, which was a Shiite splinter group, raised its head once under the presidency of Shehu Shagari, and General Muhammadu Buhari was the general that pursued the group right into Chad regardless of the fact that it was encroaching into another sovereign country.
Iran was said to have been making public pronouncements on the El Zackzaky issue, calling for his release. Recently, a senior official of Saudi Government was reported to have said that the best thing Nigerian government has done was to deal with El Zakzaky the way he is being dealt with.
Nigeria is thus unwittingly the battlefield between the two Islamic nations.
In 1979, Ayotolla Khomeini engineered an Islamic Uprising in Iran to overthrow the government of Mohammed Pahlavi, the Sha of iran, when he was vacationing in Austria. Since then, Iran has been the center of the Shiite group as a foremost group that wants to export their brand of Islam all over the world.
