The Islamic Movement in Nigeria under the leadership of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky says there were some renewed efforts by the government and its agencies to label it as "violent and terrorist".
A statement by the movement’s head of media forum, Ibrahim Musa on Sunday, said by this design, the Free Zakzaky campaign now gaining momentum and indeed the movement will be done away with finality.
"This is a multi-faceted scheme with involvement of agents at various levels and layers," he said.
"The bait here is to initiate some very alarming disruption of public peace in the name of the Islamic Movement in order to reach their goals. This design of disruption of peace in our name is plotted to be of a magnitude and proportions as to sufficiently frighten the
public and want them to want to avoid us like a plague. This will swing public opinion against us and want to go for our jugular, especially the law courts," the statement said.
"We want to unequivocally state for the umpteenth times that the use of violence is never in our character. Our leader, Sheikh Zakzaky has categorically said times without numbers that we are out to save lives and not to destroy them.
"He said anytime you here a shot and it is said to be coming from our direction, you should know that it is fake news as we do not use weapons or violent tactics to achieve our goals.
"This has been clearly demonstrated in the present Free Zakzaky campaigns since the brutal massacre of over a thousand of our innocentmembers and the illegal detention of our leader and hundreds of his followers for the past two years. For sometimes now we have been staging peaceful protest marches and sit-outs in Abuja to press home our demand for the freedom of our revered Leader Sheikh Zakzaky, his wife, and several others in detention since the Zaria massacre of December 2015.
"We have not for once resorted to the use of terror tactics. This is not about to change," the statement said.
The movement, therefore, "rejects any form of violence or use of terror tactics in our name. The Islamic Movement is not and should not be held responsible for any breech of peace or violence that will result from any false-flag plots. We will continue to employ all lawful, legal and constitutional means as we have done throughout these two years."