Mr. President, I salute you, though with a measure of sadness. The reason is simple: impunity is having free reins. The recent lynching of Ammaye by religious bigots on grounds of an allegation of blasphemy against the Holy Prophet Mohammed (SAW) is sheer barbarism. We cannot continue to tolerate the barbarism of a tiny section of our society in a multi-ethnic country.
On Saturday, August 30, a woman simply known as Ammaye, a food vendor at Kasuwan-Garba town in Mariga Local Government Area of Niger State, was in productivity in her restaurant, when a lustful customer and Muslim faithful allegedly said he would make her his wife, which drew a response of refusal. Apparently, cashing on religious arrogance and bigotry, he accused her of blasphemy and turned the matter into a mob affair.
Despite the intervention of the traditional institution, led by the district head, the zealots could not be appeased, and she was murdered in cold blood in the presence of law enforcement agents who claimed to be overpowered, thereby inflicting negative sovereignty on the state. As Wasiu Abiodun, a police spokesman, put it, “Unfortunately, it led to a mob attack, and [she] was set ablaze before a reinforcement of security teams could arrive at the scen.”
For over a generation, lynching of persons of other faiths by Muslim fundamentalists, presumably for blasphemy, has occurred with the state’s connivance, so when the state refuses to exercise its attributes of sovereignty and exercise of the monopoly of the use of violence, it becomes a culprit. A few examples would illustrate the point being made.
The case that drew heavy publicity took place in Kano in 1994. Gideon Akaluka, an Igbo trader, was beheaded by a mob who accused Akaluka of “desecrating the Qur’an.” In a brazen display of impunity, his head was hoisted on a stick and exhibited around the city. Reportedly, a miffed General Sani Abacha, then a military dictator and Islamic adherent, ordered the summary execution of the culprits. Nevertheless, it was also speculated that some so-called “blue blood” who were complicit in the matter were shielded from the long arm of the law. The substance of the matter lay in the fact that the “desecrated” paper was an instruction note often embedded in packs of medication, written in both English and Arabic, for the attention of consumers. Ignorantly, the bigots equated this with the Qur’an. No lesson learnt.
In February 2006 in Bauchi State, Florence Chukwu, a Christian teacher, who confiscated a copy of a Quran from a pupil who was reading it during an English lesson, was killed. In the incident that led to rioting by Muslims, over 20 others were killed along with her.
On March 21, 2007, Christiana Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was lynched in Gandu, Gombe State, for allegedly desecrating and mutilating the Qur’an at a secondary school in Gandu. She was again in the middle of productivity when her life was cut short. The mother of two was assigned to supervise an Islamic religious knowledge examination and prevented some students from entering the examination hall with their bags, took the bags from them, and threw them outside the venue. Subsequently, one of the students alleged that a copy of the Quran was in the bags that were thrown outside.
This drew the attention of a bunch of thugs, so-called YanKalare, who stabbed her to death while the school principal, a Muslim, who had sought to rescue her, escaped by the whiskers. Also, the thugs razed three classroom blocks, the school clinic, the administrative block and the library.
In the early hours of July 9, 2016, Eunice Olawale, a Nigerian Christian female evangelist, was murdered by suspected Muslim fundamentalists while evangelising around the Gbazango-West area of Kubwa, a satellite town of Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of government.
On May 12, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a 200-level Home Economics student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, was killed over allegations of blasphemy. Reportedly, she sent a WhatsApp voice note to her classmates that some of them deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammed (SAW).
On account of this, she was murdered in the most horrible manner and was videotaped for an unsuspecting public. The authorities in the state made light of the matter after the arrest of two suspects, Bilyaminu Aliyu and Aminu Hukunci, who were subsequently arraigned at a magistrate’s court with the charges of “Criminal Conspiracy and Inciting of Public Disturbance”, not murder, while claiming that the lead suspect, an alien, had escaped from the country.
The recurrence of lynching in a secular state calls for concern and decisive state action to clip the wings of the religious bigots and would-be bigots. They need to be reminded that Nigeria is a secular state. Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution, as altered, is very clear and states that “The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.”
The constitution guarantees religious freedom, barring the meddlesomeness of the government. It is a foundational construct of the Nigerian state. It is the lex terrae, the grundnorm. The failure of the Obasanjo administration in early 2000, when sharia was being imposed in some northern states in clear violation of the constitution, opened the floodgates of impunity.
Human Rights Watch Dispatches of May 16, 2022, shortly after the cold-blooded murder of Miss Yakubu, was very apt. The report noted, “While the constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression, thought, and conscience, the country’s criminal law makes it an offense to insult religion. Sharia, or Islamic law, applicable in the country’s 12 northern states, including Sokoto, criminalises blasphemy. The authorities have held people incommunicado and Sharia courts have sentenced those convicted of blasphemy to death.”
To be sure, these practices violate international human rights laws and conventions to which Nigeria is a party. This point was reinforced by the ECOWAS Court Declaration on the matter to the effect of Nigeria’s responsibility in international law for the violation of the freedom of expression as provided in Article 9 (2) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, thus: “Every individual shall have the right to express and disseminate his opinion within the law.” And Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states inter alia in articles (1) and (2): “i. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference. ii. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”
Credit:The Guardian