Former Kaduna Central lawmaker during the defunct 8th National Assembly, Senator Shehu Sani, has said that the former Governor Nasir El-Rufai does not deserve any sympathy over his current legal battles, while accusing him of persecuting and jailing people unjustly while he was in office as Governor in Kaduna State.

Speaking in an interview, Sani said that El-Rufai, who has now spent 200 days in detention, is only reaping what he sowed when he was governor of Kaduna State for eight years.

Sani said that he “personally spent more than four years in different prisons across the country as a pro-democracy activist during military regimes, so nobody can lecture him about detention or the pains of imprisonment.”

The former senator recalled that members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) in Kaduna spent more than five years in prison under El-Rufai’s government on what he described as politically motivated charges.

He stated that “El-Rufai’s administration strongly opposed and frustrated every attempt by judges and lawyers to grant them bail, keeping them in prolonged detention.”

In Shehu Sani’s words: “El-Rufai has served 200 days in detention, but I know that as an activist I have been in prison; I have stayed for over four years in different prisons so nobody can lecture me about detention”, he added.