Hello Dadiyata
I have no idea where you are. Nasir El-Rufai says you are dead. But, by some supernatural means, I hope this gets to you. Your father named you Abubakar Idris
I have no idea where you are. Nasir El-Rufai says you are dead. But, by some supernatural means, I hope this gets to you. Your father named you Abubakar Idris but we all know you as Dadiyata, the name with which you tweeted in Hausa.
Years have passed since that night in August 2019 when, according to witnesses, two men accosted you as you were about to lock your gate in Kaduna and took you away. You were 34. You have not been seen since. No court has heard your voice. No prison register bears your name. No grave has been shown to your family. You simply vanished into that dark space Nigerians have come to know too well.
I remember the poster your daughter held up, appealing to then President Muhammadu Buhari that her father was still missing. A child asking the most powerful man in the country a question adults were afraid to ask. It was a photograph that shamed a nation.
Kaduna, where you were taken, was under the watch of El-Rufai, a man never shy of controversy, never allergic to combat. In those days, he was in a running battle with critics, activists and opposition figures. You were known as a supporter of Rabiu Kwankwaso and a fierce critic of then Kano State Governor Umar Ganduje. You tweeted in Hausa, and your words travelled far. In a season when politics was war by other means, tweets were bullets.
When you disappeared, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party accused the Department of State Services of abducting you. The DSS denied it. The police denied it. Your wife, Haneefa, went to court. She sued the DSS, the Commissioner of Police and the Kaduna State Government, demanding your unconditional release and N50 million in damages. The state denied holding you. The DSS denied arresting you. Everyone denied everything. Only your absence remained stubbornly present.
The question that trailed your case then has refused to go away: what is the life of a Nigerian worth?
For years, your name has surfaced intermittently on social media, especially every August. Hashtags bloom like seasonal flowers. “Where is Dadiyata?” We ask. Then we return to our routines, to fuel queues, to election cycles, to new scandals that crowd out old wounds.
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But lately, your name has returned to the front pages because of a startling claim. Nasir El-Rufai, no longer governor and now repositioning himself in the ever-shifting chessboard of Nigerian politics, has publicly alleged that you are dead. According to him, the information available to him suggests that you were killed shortly after your abduction. He did not say he ordered it. He did not say the Kaduna State Government carried it out. He said security agencies informed him you were dead.
It was a claim that reopened an old scar.
Your family immediately pushed back. They demanded proof. Human rights advocates asked the obvious question: if a governor was informed that a citizen abducted from his state had been killed, what did he do with that information? Was there an investigation? Were suspects identified? Was anyone prosecuted? Or was it filed away under “regrettable collateral damage” in the messy theatre of Nigerian politics?
El-Rufai’s assertion has placed a moral burden on the state. It is one thing for authorities to deny knowledge. It is another for a former governor to say, in effect, that the worst has happened. Words carry weight. Especially when they come from a man who once held the coercive apparatus of a state in his hands.
Your wife has insisted that without a body, without forensic evidence, without an official report, such a declaration is cruel. It extinguishes hope without offering closure. It is easy for politicians to move on. They reinvent themselves. They form new alliances. They write memoirs. But for families of the missing, time is frozen on the day their loved one disappeared.
We have seen this script before. From the days of military rule when activists vanished into detention cells, to the present era of democracy where critics sometimes disappear into unmarked vehicles. The faces change. The uniforms change. The constitution remains. Yet the fear lingers.
You were a lecturer at the Federal University Dutsinma. By all accounts, you were good at your job. You had students who listened to you. You had opinions you were not afraid to share. In a country that claims to be a democracy, that should not be a crime.
When the PDP described your disappearance as an attempt to intimidate and silence public opinion, it was playing politics. Opposition parties always do. But beneath the politics was a truth that Nigerians recognise. When critics vanish and the state shrugs, free speech grows timid.
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Your case became symbolic. Not because you were the first to disappear. Sadly, you were not. But because your disappearance happened in the age of social media, in the full glare of public attention. It happened under an elected government that prided itself on anti-corruption and discipline. It happened in a state governed by a man who never pretended to be neutral in political fights.
El-Rufai’s recent claim forces us to confront uncomfortable possibilities. If you were indeed killed, who killed you? On whose orders? And why has there been no transparent investigation? If, on the other hand, you are alive somewhere, why has the state failed to locate and free you?
A democracy is measured not only by how it treats its allies but by how it treats its critics. You were a critic. You were partisan. You were vocal. But you were a citizen.
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There is something chilling about enforced disappearance. It denies the victim due process. It denies the family mourning. It denies society accountability. It creates a void where rumour thrives. In your case, rumour has now been upgraded to allegation by a former governor.
The burden is now on the authorities. The current administration cannot hide behind the argument that this happened in the past. Crimes do not expire because governments change. If El-Rufai has information, it should be handed to investigators. If security agencies briefed him, those briefings should be documented. Nigerians deserve more than whispers.
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Your daughter is older now. She has grown in the shadow of your absence. Each birthday, each school event, each Father’s Day must reopen the wound. For her, this is not about APC or PDP, not about Kwankwaso or Ganduje. It is about a father who left home one evening and never returned.
We like to say Nigeria is a country of laws. We quote sections of the constitution about fundamental rights. We hold elections and celebrate transitions. But somewhere between the ballot box and the police station, rights evaporate.
What is the life of a Nigerian worth if a citizen can disappear and the state cannot account for him, if a former governor can say he is dead and no official investigation follows and if years can pass and the only thing that remains constant is claim and counter claim?
Your name continues to echo because it represents more than one man. It represents a question hanging over our democracy. Until it is answered with facts, with transparency, with justice, the echo will not fade.
Wherever you are, Dadiyata, this country owes you the truth.
My final take: Hello, Dadiyata. If you are gone, as claimed, then this letter is an elegy. If you are alive, then it is a plea. Either way, it is an indictment of a system that allows citizens to vanish without consequence.
