Sheikh Bello Yabo, a popular Sokoto-based Islamic cleric, has made the resemblance of the attack on the convoy of President Muhammadu Buhari in Kastina to the ‘stoning of Satan’. 

“You have heard how Katsina people stoned Satan yesterday. May Allah bless the Katsina people. I was filled with joy last night. Any preacher who faults them should go and correct…(sic) the problems created by the administration,” Mr Yabo said on Friday. 

Stoning of “Satan” is one of the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage rituals in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which is also known as jamarat. 

On Wednesday, some residents of Katsina State trooped out to the streets to express their anger at what they described as untold hardship Nigerians are currently passing through under the Buhari regime. 

The angry protestors in their numbers were said to have made bonfires and also threw pebbles at the motorcade of Mr Buhari. 

Speaking during his preaching, Mr Yabo said the action of the people showed that Nigerians were frustrated and going through hell under the Buhari regime. 

He urged that other Nigerian leaders be treated by the people in similar way when they underperform. 

“This how they should be treated wherever they go. This how they will realise they wronged the people,” Mr Yabo added. “True to their slogan, Katsina people have shown that they are only shy but fearless. And they have shown that yesterday. May God bless them.” 

According to him, Nigerians must continue to speak up and question their leaders or continue to suffer. 

Mr Yabo said that Mr Buhari, who enjoyed the support of Nigerians while campaigning for his first term tenure, has ended up plunging the country in untold hardship. 

“They booed him as a thief and stoned him like Satan. This is how people should revolt against their oppressors. Until we act this way, they will never regard us.

“What happened to him (Buhari) is a clear example of change from grace to grass. Remember, this is a man for whom many people were killed,” the cleric said. 

He added, “But now look at how he is being embarrassed and pelted with stones in his own state like Satan.

“I’m happy that this happened in Katsina; otherwise, it would have been given a different interpretation.” 

Mr Yabo’s rebuke comes as governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano asked Mr Buhari to postpone his planned trip to the state. 

Mr Ganduje said the residents of the state were “angry” with the redesign of the new naira notes and the hardship that the January 31 deadline for old notes has brought to them.

The governor, in a statement signed by his spokesman, Abba Anwar, advised Mr Buhari to suspend his planned January 30 and 31 visit to commission projects.

“Deeply concerned with the hardship caused by the limited time given for halting the use of old Naira notes by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and for security reasons, Kano State Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje reveals that the state resolved and wrote to the presidency that the visit of the president to commission some projects to be postponed,” the statement read in part.