The long-running mystery surrounding the disappearance of Abubakar Idris, popularly known as Dadiyata, has erupted into a fresh political row between Nasir El-Rufai and Abdullahi Ganduje.
Dadiyata, a vocal social media commentator, was abducted on August 2, 2019, by unidentified gunmen as he drove into his residence in Barnawa, Kaduna. His disappearance triggered nationwide outrage and sustained legal action by his family and civil society groups.
In 2020, a federal high court in Kaduna ordered the Department of State Security (DSS) and other agencies to produce him. The DSS denied holding him.
Speaking on Arise Television on Friday, El-Rufai distanced himself and the Kaduna government from the case. He insisted Dadiyata was not a critic of Kaduna but of Kano state.
“He was a fierce critic of the Kano state government,” el-Rufai said, describing Dadiyata as aligned with the Kwankwasiyya political movement. He claimed he only became aware of Dadiyata after the family reported the abduction.
The former governor further alleged that a police officer later confessed that operatives were sent from Kano to abduct Dadiyata — a claim he said surfaced three years after the incident.
However, controversy deepened after a December 23, 2019 post resurfaced on X by Bashir El-Rufai, the former governor’s son. At the height of the #WhereIsDadiyata campaign, Bashir criticised those demanding justice, warning that “dangerous lies in the public space have consequences”.
Ganduje swiftly rejected El-Rufai’s claims. In a statement signed by Muhammad Garba, former Kano commissioner for information, he described the allegations as “reckless” and an attempt to shift responsibility.
According to Ganduje, Dadiyata lived and operated in Kaduna and was widely known for criticising the Kaduna government.
He also questioned the logic of El-Rufai’s account. “It is difficult to reconcile a claim of having no prior knowledge of the individual with detailed assertions about who was responsible,” he said.
Nearly seven years after the abduction, Dadiyata’s fate remains unknown and the political blame game continues, while his family waits for answers.
