Dadiyata’s wife: I’m sad about el-Rufai’s son mocking my husband’s abduction
Kadijah, the wife of social media influencer, Mr Idris Abubakar, popularly known as Dadiyata, has expressed sorrow over the mocking of her husband’s disappearance by Mr Bashir el-Rufai, son of
Kadijah, the wife of social media influencer, Mr Idris Abubakar, popularly known as Dadiyata, has expressed sorrow over the mocking of her husband’s disappearance by Mr Bashir el-Rufai, son of former Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai.
She spoke in a video interview with an Ambassador-Designate, Mr Reno Omokri, which was released on his X-handle yesterday.
“I felt bad about it. I can’t even explain…,” Kadijah stated in the emotion-laden video, which went viral with over 86,000 impressions on the internet within hours of its release.
Dadiyata, a lecturer at the Federal University, Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, was intercepted and abducted by unidentified armed men as he drove into his compound in Barnawa, Kaduna State. He has not been seen since then.
Reputed to be a fierce political critic, many socio-political commentators accused the Malam Nasir el-Rufai-led Kaduna State government of being responsible for his disappearance. An accusation the government denied.
However, four months after his disappearance, Mr Bashir el-Rufai, tweeted: “Those same clowns who encourage him when he was creating false stories and capitalising on lies that could endanger lives solely for political ends are the same individuals trending hashtags asking, ‘#WhereisDadiyata.’
“Dangerous lies in the public space have consequences.”
Responding to Omokri’s question about how she felt regarding the tweet, Kadijah said she was so sad that she could not explain her feelings.
She, however, prayed for her husband’s safe return.
“We pray that one day, he will come back,” the mother of two, Hassana (12) and Fatima (6), stated, narrating how her husband was abducted by gunmen as he alighted from his car in their compound on August 2nd 2019.
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Assuring Kadijah of Dadiyata’s safe return if he is alive, and justice, in the unlikely event of his death, Omokri empathised with the distressed woman.
The Dadiyata matter resurfaced on 14 February 2026, during an ARISE TV interview in which el-Rufai addressed the longstanding allegation that his government was responsible for the renowned social critic’s disappearance.
Believed to be under renewed investigation concerning Dadiyata’s disappearance, el-Rufai stated that the social critic was never a critic of his administration, as has been widely speculated. Instead, he alleged that the activist was a vocal critic of the former Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje.
According to him, “A policeman posted from Kano to Ekiti State allegedly confessed to someone that they were sent from Kano to abduct Dadiyata and that the officer was worried about that. That is all I know.”
He insisted that the disappearance was unrelated to the Kaduna State government, despite the incident occurring within the state, arguing that the state could not have provided specific protection because it was unaware of his conflict with the Kano State Government.
He challenged Amnesty International’s description of Dadiyata as a “fierce critic” of the Kaduna State Government, urging researchers to examine the social critic’s social media timeline, which remains available for scrutiny.
