Audu Maikori Has Been Arrested

Close associates of Audu Maikori have revealed to Nigerian Entertainment Today how the Chocolate City boss was deceived by the police and whisked away to the Department of State Security Headquarters in Abuja.

Speaking to our correspondent under the condition of anonymity, the source described the arrest as ‘trickish’.

‘This afternoon, Audu Maikori was invited by the policemen from the station he had gone to report his driver for misinforming him on the killing of five students of the College of Education Kaduna. They came under the pretext of wanting to talk to him about the case. On getting to the station, he was then served with a warrant of arrest and taken forcibly to the DSS Headquarters in Abuja,’ he said.

However, in a twist that Chocolate City insiders see as dubious, the warrant of arrest was reportedly signed for in Abuja- leading them to see it as the Kaduna State government’s displeasure at Maikori’s activism against the seeming lack of concern by the government at the recent killings going on in that state.

According to our source, ‘We have cause to believe that this arrest was at the behest of the Kaduna State governor.’

The arrest came on a Friday evening and it is expected that the lawyer/music mogul would be detained over the two-day weekend.

‘We tried to get the DSS to release him on Friday evening but they did not oblige. He would be kept in their custody until Monday morning’ our source went on.

As it is commonly known, when security operatives makes an arrest over the weekend, the detainee is usually kept until the next working day- the next Monday.

Audu Maikori has spearheaded the #SouthernKadunaKillings campaign to draw attention to what he called the Kaduna State government’s inaction in combating the murderous rampage going on in parts of his home state.

Last week, he was forced to issue a retraction when some of the information he was disseminating was found to be false. In the statement, he apologized for being misinformed by his personal driver who had told him of the killing of students of the state’s college of education; news that turned out to be false. He then faced a series of backlash, on social media and off it, for his campaign being motivated by political motives. He on his part has insisted that he was moved by the bloodshed going on in his state.

Audu Maikori has always been an active social commentator. In 2010 while protesting that then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan be sworn in as Acting President during the protracted illness of Umaru Yaradua, he was photographed in a heated argument with an armed police officer.

Kaduna State has been in the news in recent times for the spate of killings by nomadic herdsmen who have plagued the quiet farmlands outside of the state capital.