Alleged Hate Speech: Lawyer Reports Asadussunnah, Shehu To DSS

A private legal practitioner Abbas Mu’azu has petitioned the director-general of the Department of State Security (DSS) 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 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 of which he issued to our correspondent yesterday in Gombe, Abbas alleged that Sheikh Asadussunnah and Mahdi had engaged in campaign of calumny and ethnic bigotry.

He said their actions were not only in violation of the Electoral Act but were capable of causing chaos in the nation during the forthcoming general election.

“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 human rights activist from Katsina State. I will be discussing the worrisome conducts of these two public figures in detail 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.

He alleged that Sheikh Asadussunnah uses his seat as a religious scholar to persistently demonise 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 information and allegedly canvasses support for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar on regional sentiments.