Former Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has officially broken his silence regarding the 2019 abduction of social media critic and lecturer Abubakar Idris, popularly known as Dadiyata.
Speaking during an interview on Arise News, El-Rufai dismissed long-standing allegations linking his administration to the disappearance, instead suggesting the trail leads directly to political actors and security forces from Kano State.
“Dadiyata’s timeline is still around, go and study it,” El-Rufai said. “He was not a fierce critic of the Kaduna State Government; he was a fierce critic of the Kano State Government. It was Ganduje that was his problem.” Dadiyata, a 34-year-old lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics at Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State, was abducted on August 2, 2019. Masked men intercepted him as he drove into his compound in Barnawa, Kaduna, taking him away in his own vehicle.
For over seven years, his whereabouts remain unknown. No conclusive investigation findings have been released, and no group has claimed responsibility for his disappearance. The former governor, now an opposition figure in the African Democratic Congress, claimed he was unaware of Dadiyata until after the abduction was reported to police.
“We only got the report of Dadiyata’s existence and that he lived in Kaduna State after his family reported to the police that he was abducted,” El-Rufai explained. He added that investigations suggested the abductors came from Kano. “When we investigated, all that we could gather from his family was that the abductors came, took him, and they came from Kano.”
El-Rufai also revealed that three years after the incident, a police officer allegedly confessed to involvement. “A policeman that was posted out of Kano to Ekiti State confessed to someone that they were sent from Kano and they took the guy, they abducted Dadiyata, and he felt bad about it.” Dadiyata was a known social media activist. His family and human rights organizations have filed multiple lawsuits seeking his release or information about his whereabouts.
In 2020, a Federal High Court in Kaduna ordered security agencies, including the State Security Service, to produce or release him. The agencies denied holding him in custody. Amnesty International and other international watchdogs have classified the case as an enforced disappearance. Human rights groups have criticized the federal government for its “silence and lack of action” on the matter.
El-Rufai maintained that while Dadiyata lived in Kaduna, his administration could not have protected someone they didn’t know existed. “If anybody is to be asked questions about the disappearance of Dadiyata, it’s the Kano State Government,” he concluded.
