2023 Elections: Bauchi Lawyer writes DSS about hate speech
A Bauchi based private legal practitioner Barrister Abbas Mu’azu has written to the Director General of the Department of State Security (DSS) Yusuf Magaji Bichi, about a popular Kaduna State based islamic cleric Sheikh Musa Yusuf Asadussunnah, and an activist in Katsina State Mr Mahdi Shehu, over their alleged hate speeches and divisive utterances ahead of the 2023 elections.
In the petition letter addressed to Bichi and copied to the chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a copy which he issued to PERISCOPE NIGERIA 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 dou 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 demonize the person of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate 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 emerges the next president, he will relocate the nation’s capital to Lagos among other false informations and allegedly canvasses support for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar on regional sentiments.
“He usually justifies this repugnant action with the saying ‘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.
On Mahdi Shehu, the lawyer alleged that he 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 Mahdi made allegation in the post that the Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi will 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 DG
