Ibrahim Zakzaky

Ibraheem Yaqoub El-Zakzakypronunciation^ⓘ (alternately Ibraheem Zakzaky, Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky; born 5 May 1953) is a Nigerian religious leader. An outspoken and prominent Shi'a leader in Nigeria, he was imprisoned several times for his struggle against injustice, especially the system of corruption in his country. He claims that only Islam can proffer solution to the complex socio-political problems, which has over the years stagnated the country's development plans. In a lecture he has delivered in marking the occasion of Sheikh Uthman Bn Fodio Week (May 2023) organized by the Academic Forum of Islamic Movement, Zakzaky disclosed that he is continuing the Jihad of Uthman Bn Fodio to make sure that Islam becomes the ruling religion in not only Nigeria but the whole West Africa. In a lecture delivered on the same occasion in Sokoko (20 May 2023), one of his proponents, Dr. Nasir Hashim has claimed that Zakzaky’s dream is the only hope for Africa.

Sheikh Zakzaky is the head of Nigeria's Islamic Movement, which he started in the late 1970s, when he was a student at Ahmadu Bello University, and began propagating Shia Islam around 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution—which saw Iran's monarchy overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. Zakzaky believed that the establishment of a republic along similar religious lines in Nigeria would be feasible. He has been detained several times due to accusations of civil disobedience or recalcitrance under military regimes in Nigeria during the 1980s and 1990s, and is still viewed with suspicion or as a threat by Nigerian authorities. In December 2015, the Nigerian Army raided his residence in Zaria, seriously injured him, and killed hundreds of his followers. Since then, he has remained under state detention in the nation's capital pending his release, which was ordered in late 2016. In 2019, a court in Kaduna state granted him and his wife bail to seek treatment abroad but they returned from India after 3 days on the premises of unfair treatment and tough restrictions by security operatives deployed to the medical facility.

Recently the Kaduna state higher court ordered his immediate release after 2,055 days of illegal detention almost six years. The DSS denied to give him his traveling documents for medical treatment for a period of about two years, recently the Nigerian Immigration Service reissued him and his wife their passports.