In a letter sent to the organisers, the Movement speaking through the Free Zakzaky Campaign Committee chairman, Sheikh Abdulrahaman Yola, said allowing El-rufai to participate in the event will undoubtedly send the wrong signals to TED fans in Nigeria and globally.
The Movement said, El-rufai's involvement "definitely negates the spirit of TED's mission of ideas worth spreading."
The Movement posited that TED speakers are supposed to be thinkers, doers and idea-generators and El-rufai, whose government confessed to brutal extrajudicial killing of 347 IMN members and secretly burying all in a mass grave, does not fit that frame.
"The name and brand of the TEDx program will be indelibly soiled in blood," the letter pointed out.
IMN further observed that the governor's continued fierce persecution without remorse despite national and international outcry will not "bridge the gap," which is what the TEDxMaitama 2017 chose as its theme.
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