A new document has shown how embattled minister of communication and digital economy, Isa Pantami and other Muslim leaders plotted to assassinate former Kaduna State Governor Patrick Yakowa.
Yakowa, the first Christian governor of Kaduna State died on December 15, 2012, in a helicopter crash in Bayelsa.
Mr Pantami chaired the July 13, 2010, meeting of Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), a foremost Isla mic body led by Sultan of Sokoto Sa’ad Abubakar, where it was agreed that Mr Yakowa and his family must be eliminated because he was a Christian leader leading a state in the Muslim-dominated North, Peoples Gazette reports.
“We must either use the security or other means to eliminate the governor, his family and all those they perceive as supporting him,” Mr Pantami and other leaders said in their communique adopted at the meeting held at Bauchi Central Mosque.
The meeting complained that Mr Yakowa was making moves to contest for governor in 2011 and he had the support of former President Goodluck Jonathan, a fellow Christian.
Mr Yakowa became governor in 2010 when Mr Jonathan tapped Namadi Sambo, then Kaduna governor, as his vice-president.
Mr Yakowa contested in 2011 and won a substantive four-year term. He was killed in a helicopter crash barely a year later in 2012, alongside former national security adviser Owoeye Patrick Azazi.
The event had long been suspected to be more than just an accident, and investigation into what happened was never concluded or made public.
