Nasiru Musa Idris, husband of a Moroccan woman at the centre of a dispute involving Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has accused the cleric of keeping his wife away from him for about 11 months.
Idris, speaking to RFI Hausa, claimed that he took his young wife to Gumi for counselling after the cleric requested to speak with her, but she stopped answering his calls after the meeting.
“For 11 months now, my wife has been in his hands through injustice and ill treatment. He has no relationship with her; she had never known him. The only place they knew each other was through me,” Idris claims.
He said the dispute later escalated over Gumi’s demand for another marriage certificate from a Sharia Court, despite the couple having marriage documents from Morocco and Nigeria.
“I told him that I did not agree with the marriage certificate he told me to obtain. Later, he went to the Sharia Court in Malali and asked them to issue one to him,” Idris Said.
He further accused Gumi of seeking to separate the couple and frustrating attempts by security agencies to investigate the matter.
“My complaint is that he should come forward and answer the invitation of the police so that an investigation can be conducted. If he is right, there is nothing stopping him from going to the authorities to clear his name,” he said.
However, Gumi denied the claims, saying the woman had already left Nigeria and was happily living in Morocco with her parents.
“But I will take him to court for defamation against me. As for the issue of the girl, she has already left Nigeria and she is in Morocco happily with her parents,” Gumi told Newsmen.
Gumi’s aide, Nasiru Ayuba, also denied that the cleric kept the woman in his house, claiming she approached Gumi herself for help.
“The claims that Malam kept his wife in his house is not true. It was the woman herself who went to Malam to ask him for help,” Ayuba said.
