A Katsina-based Islamic cleric, Mallam Aminu Usman, popularly called Abu Ammar, is being allegedly detained by the state command of the DSS. Sources said he was arrested on Tuesday over his sermon accusing President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of a nonchalant attitude to the worsening insecurity across the country.

Our reporter gathered that Abu Ammar was with his friend, Malam Shamsu, when he received a call inviting him by the security men to the DSS office in the state. “He obliged and they went together; after a while, they (DSS) asked Shamsu to leave just at about breaking of fast yesterday,” a source said.

The cleric’s son, Murtala, confirmed the arrest yesterday when our reporter visited his house located around Filin Samji area of the metropolis. When contacted, the spokesman of Katsina State Police Command, SP Gambo Isah, said he was hearing the development for the first time. It would be recalled that Abu Ammar was in March 2015 whisked away by the DSS in a similar circumstance. Also, a Bauchi-based Islamic cleric, Ustaz Idris Abdulaziz is said to be in the custody of the Department of State Security, Bauchi State Command, five days after he was invited for questioning. The cleric, invited last Friday, was said to have been taken to Abuja for further interrogation. One of his followers told Daily Trust yesterday that they had not spoken to the cleric since Saturday. “We have sent some people to Abuja in order to know where he is being held and possibly speak to him, “he said. The cleric’s students, under the aegis of Dutsen Tanshi Majlis Foundation of Nigeria, in a statement by Ma’am Ya’u Idris, called for calm. “Any group of persons, religious group and association that engages in any sort of violence in respect of the current situation is at their own peril without the consent of the above named Majlis and that of Imam Dr Idris Abdulazeez Bauchi,” the statement warned. (Daily Trust)

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