A mild drama ensued at the Upper Sharia Court in Kofar-Kudu, Kano metropolis, during the ongoing blasphemy case against controversial Kano-based Islamic cleric as he accused his lawyers of unethical acts.
Kano state government charged the embattled cleric with a four-count bothering on blasphemy and using offensive words against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) during his teachings, which according to the government, are against the provisions of section 382(b) of Kano State Shari’ah Law, 2000.
At the resumed hearing of the case on Thursday, Haruna Magashi, representing the team of lawyers of the cleric, applied to withdraw from the case.
The trial judge, Ibrahim Sarki Yola, granted their application, after which Abduljabbar asked the court to give him time to get new lawyers to represent him.
The cleric also levelled several allegations against his lawyers as the reason for their withdrawal, chief of which he said was his refusal to go with the lawyers’ demand for him to feign being mentally unstable before the psychiatrist the court recommended him to see.
Earlier, the court received a medical report from Murtala Mohammed Hospital and Kano State Psychiatric Hospital, Dawanau on the hearing and mental health of the cleric.
Both report, according to the court, indicated that the cleric does not have any hearing challenge or any mental case.
Daily Trust reports that the court had at the last sitting ordered the cleric to be subjected to the tests following the cleric’s refusal to answer all the new charges against him by the state government.
Justice Sarki-Yola ordered that the cleric be examined by a psychiatrist at Dawanau Psychiatric Hospital in the state for check on his mental health, as well as by an audiologist at Murtala Muhammad Specialists Hospital, to find out why he was mum to all the new charges read before him.
But the cleric on Thursday told the court that it was his former lawyers that asked him not to answer to the new charges read to him at the last sitting, adding that the same lawyers also asked him not to cooperate with the psychiatrist and audiologist during his examination but he refused to go with their plan, hence, their decision to withdraw from the case. The cleric also alleged that one of his former lawyers connived with a top government official to lure his wife with N250,000.
“Even at the last sitting they were the ones who asked me not to respond to any questions in the court proceeding and up till now they failed to tell me their reason of doing so”, he said.
He also accused them of collecting N300,000 to organize a press conference to cover him on the reason of his keeping mum during the last proceedings.
When contacted, the cleric’s former legal team said that the entire allegations levelled against them by their ex-client were not true.
Represented by Barrister Rabiu Shu’aibu Abdullahi, the team said they could not divulge the reason for their withdrawal from the case because doing so would violate the rules of professional conduct of legal practitioners. The lawyers also gave the cleric two weeks to lodge his complaint against them before appropriate authorities or face legal action from them.
Meanwhile, the judge has adjourned proceedings in the case to September 30 to enable the cleric to engage a new lawyer.
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