Two Of The Suspects Answering Questions Posed By The Divisional Commander In The Presence Of The Divisional Crime Officer And The District Commander
Muslim youth in Nima last Friday inflicted injuries on each other following an intensive social media trading of invectives against leading clerics in the Islamic faith in the country by their respective supporters.
According to Alhaji Imoro Baba Issa, the Public Relations Officer of the Council of Zongo Chiefs ‘but for my calling the Nima Police to deal with the security challenge, there could have been fatalities’.
By the time sanity returned to a segment of the sprawling Accra suburb, two persons, Mustapha Sulemana and Osumanu Fulani, were left with serious cuts on their heads and hands.
One of the suspects in the mayhem is wanted by the Nima Police to assist in investigations into what transpired as he appears to have taken cover.
A little over a month ago, a radio station in Kumasi played audios of very serious insults against the National Chief Imam Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu by some persons said to be followers of Sheikh Abu Fail, son of the late Malam Maikano Jallo, who is said not to recognize the office of the national cleric and considers himself as the leader of the Tijjaniyya sect in the country.
Supporters of the National Chief Imam also responded through willing radio stations whose role in the simmering trouble is seen as a worrying contributory factor to the simmering breach of peace.
Both the National Chief Imam and the late Malam Maikano belong to the Tijjanniyya sect of Islam but in the past years, a disagreement has frosted the relationship between them with their supporters sometimes at each other’s throats.
The supporters of Malam Maikano’s son are referred to as the Jalos but the no love lost relationship between them and their Sharubutu counterparts has been heightened by social media – the youth turning to these channels to exchange unprintable invectives.
The contents of the exchanges, though unprintable, are propelled worldwide through social media to wherever Ghanaian Zongo Muslims reside.
The trading of invectives is more pronounced in Accra and Kumasi; two places with a large Tijjanniyya following, some of them living especially in the US.
It is ironic that the no-love-lost situation is intra-sect and not cross sectional as is the case in some countries such as Iraq and others.
On Saturday, the Nima Divisional Police Commander, Chief Superintendent/Mr. Abraham Aquaye, held an open engagement with stakeholders in the suburb most of them various chiefs/heads of ethnic groupings to discuss the threat to peace occasioned by the mayhem.
Although the divisional commander and the chiefs opted for an amicable resolution of the mayhem, others who contributed to the durbar-like engagement said the issue is national and not restricted to Nima but beyond, extending to Kumasi.
The victims spotting their plastered injuries were around to state their narratives as was Malam Ridwan, a Nima cleric, with allegiance to the National Chief Imam.
By A.R. Gomda