2023 Elections: Legal Practitioner Petitions DSS over Islamic Cleric, Activist’s Alleged Hate Speech

A Bauchi based Legal Practitioner, Mr. Abbas Mu’azu, has petitioned the Director General of the Department of State Security (DSS), Mr. Yusuf Magaji Bichi, against a popular Kaduna State based Islamic Cleric, Sheikh Musa Yusuf Asadussunnah, and an Activist in Katsina State. Mr. Mahdi Shehu, over alleged hate speech and divisive utterances ahead of the 2023 elections.

In the petition letter addressed to Bichi and copied to the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a copy which he issued to newsmen yesterday in Gombe, Abbas alleged that the dou of Sheikh Asadussunnah and Mahdi have engaged in campaign of calumny and ethnic bigotry opining that their actions are not only in violation of the electoral act but are capable of causing chaos in the nation during the election time.

“The crux of this petition is the ungodly campaigns being prosecuted by the duo of Sheikh Musa Yusuf Asadussunnah, an Islamic scholar from Kaduna State and Mr. Mahdi Shehu, a supposed human rights activist from Katsina State.

“I will be discussing the worrisome conducts of these two public figures in details in succeeding paragraphs and explain how such conducts threaten the nation’s fragile peace and unity before, during and after the 2023 general elections,” he said.

Buttressing his points, the legal practitioner alleged that Sheikh Asadussunnah uses his seat as a religious scholar to persistently demonise the person of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, Senator Bola Tinubu, to instigate northern voters to reject him by using regional and religious bigotry.

According to him, the cleric has allegedly claimed that if Tinubu emerged the next president, he would relocate the nation’s capital to Lagos among other false information and allegedly canvasses support for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP)’s Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on regional sentiments.

“He usually justifies this repugnant action with the saying that “it is better to have wealth in your house than in your neighbours.’ Indeed, Sheikh Musa Yusuf Asadussunnah’s actions and utterances are in a head-on collision with Section 92, (1), (2) and (3-a-b) of the Electoral Act 2022,” he claimed.

The lawyer alleged that Shehu had sometime in September this year also made a divisive post on his Facebook page titled “Rescue Arewa Urgently” wherein he allegedly called on northern christians to avoid voting for candidates of southern extraction.

He said that Shehu made allegation in the post that the Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, would create Biafra as a separate country from Nigeria if he wins the 2023 election.

“It is on record that the little things we gloss over have been responsible for genocides in many countries across the globe. The Rwandan genocide should be enough reason for your office to timely wade into this situation with a view to forestalling a repetition of it in Nigeria.

“We have had enough threat to the peace, security and unity of our beloved country and there is no point allowing any individual or group of individuals to add salt to our existing injuries.” he told the DSS.