RELIGIOUS extremists struck again last week, tweaking brazenly at Nigeria’s fragile union. Claiming that she had blasphemed their religion, Muslim students of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, stoned and battered Deborah Yakubu, a 200-level Home Economics student, to death. They thereafter set the corpse ablaze. It was murder most vile but it was not the first such barbarity. On the contrary, such incidents occur frequently in Northern Nigeria. The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the northern elite must resolve to make this the last.
Nigeria’s international reputation, already at its nadir, has become even more odious. The videos uploaded online by the exultant fiends as they battered and burnt Deborah were revolting.
According to reports, Deborah had told her colleagues on a WhatsApp group to stop posting religious and non-academic content. In doing this, her accusers alleged that she had used blasphemous words. The zealots then reportedly demanded that the young lady retract her statement. Instantly, they mobilised a mob, stoned Deborah and battered her with sticks, piled tyres and wood on her lifeless body and immolated her. How callous!
That such bestial behaviour occurred in a citadel of learning and in broad daylight is sad, but is symptomatic of the pervasive nature of religious extremism in Northern Nigeria. Unchecked, it has birthed and sustained a 13-year-old bloody jihadist insurgency that has spread from the North-East through the northern region and earned the country notoriety as the world’s third most terrorised country.
There has been swift, unequivocal widespread condemnation of the outrage, including from notable northern and Islamic leaders like the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, and the state governor, Aminu Tambuwal. Commendably, respected Islamic clerics insist that the action of the mob does not reflect their religion. But equivocation and excuses are still coming from some quarters.
Buhari’s reaction 24 hours later condemning the murder, but with a homily that people “should respect other people’s religion” and ordering an enquiry, were troubling. Unwittingly, this may set the stage to politicise or spread blame, including on the victim.
This is a crime, simple. The responsibility of the government is clear: those who committed the heinous felony should be identified, arrested and swiftly prosecuted. The next step is to establish if there was negligence by the school authorities and the police and take the necessary action. Buhari and Tambuwal should send a strong signal to religious fanatics that Nigeria remains a heterogeneous, secular state.
Backed by some extremist preachers and accustomed to impunity, the killers regrouped the following day with hordes of almajiri to riot through Sokoto city, audaciously demanding the release of the only two suspects detained by police for Deborah’s murder. They attacked churches, killed one person, ransacked and looted shops. They laid siege to and attempted to torch the Sultan’s palace and the church and office of the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto. Only timely security intervention saved the day.
The killers are easily identifiable as seen in viral videos gleefully celebrating their crime. The police should track them down.
Carnage by extremists in Northern Nigeria must be brought to an end. According to civil rights lawyer, Femi Falana, 190 persons were killed by mobs in Nigeria in the last two years, and “Sokoto State is ahead with 13 cases.” Open Doors, a US non-profit, declared that religious persecution in Nigeria “is simply put, brutally violent.”
Among others, Gideon Akaluka was beheaded in Kano in 1995, falsely accused of desecrating the Koran. Sharia riots in year 2000 left over 4,000 persons dead across several northern states. In 2002, protesting the Miss World Beauty Pageant billed for Kaduna that year, fanatics killed over 250 persons. Before then, a female zealot in 1987 accused a speaker at a Christian fellowship at the College of Education, Kanfanchan, of blasphemy. Her co-religionists mobilised and ignited a killing spree, burning churches and relaxation centres across Kaduna, old Bauchi, old Sokoto, old Kano and other states. Scores died in the attacks.
In 2004, fanatical students at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi State, pronounced a fatwa on a Christian student, Sunday Achi, and strangled him to death. In 2006, rioters burned churches, shops and homes, and killed 16 people citing an alleged blasphemous cartoon in a magazine, Jyllands-Posten, in faraway Denmark. Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was lynched by her cheating students in Gombe in 2007, who falsely accused her of desecrating the Koran while she was invigilating an examination. Grace Ushang, a National Youth Service Corps member, was raped and murdered in 2009 in Borno State for the alleged offence of wearing the regulation NYSC khaki trousers.
An evangelist, Eunice Olawale, was butchered at Kubwa, Abuja in 2016 while on an early morning preaching. In the same year, a mob in Kano lynched a female trader, Bridget Agbahiwe, for alleged blasphemy. Some state governments legitimise rights violation: in 2020, a Kano-based musician, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, was sentenced to death by a Sharia Court in Kano for alleged blasphemy. Also, in April 2022, a Kano State High Court sentenced an atheist, Mubarak Bala, to 24 years imprisonment for blasphemy.
Religious extremism flourishes in Northern Nigeria because the perpetrators are not severely punished. Instead, they often go scot-free. State governments compound the problem by promoting religion contrary to the explicit provision of Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution that states, “The government of the federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion.”
Extremist mobs share the same motivation with terrorist groups. Both are bent on forcing their interpretation of their faith on everyone. They are willing to kill extra-judicially and exhibit extreme acts of savagery. The only difference is that the terror groups are organised, have identifiable leadership and belong to global networks. The mobs are often spontaneous, hastily organised by extremists.
Successive federal and state governments, clerics, the northern political and intellectual elite who are by their actions, utterances and indulgences, have for long enabled extremism by failing to impose retribution, should change. Those who have for decades borne the brunt may explode in retaliation. The 12 state governments that have adopted criminal aspects of the Sharia are violating the constitution and the rights of others. They should roll back the laws and disband the religious police that specialise in infringing on civil and property rights.
As a former Defence Minister, Theophilus Danjuma, once warned, Nigeria has survived a secessionist civil war; it may not survive a religious one. The UK-based Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust reported that the killing of over 1,000 Christians throughout 2019 by Fulani militia attracted some retaliatory violence by Christians. It is happening in Kaduna, Plateau, Benue and Taraba states. Already divided along ethnic and regional lines, the sectarian divide is further pitting Nigerians into mutually hostile camps. The government and the northern elite can, and should stop it.
State governments should disconnect from religion. There should be mass education and zero-tolerance for lawlessness.
You can only solve a problem you correctly diagnose: truly, mass illiteracy averaging over 70 per cent in the northern states, 80 per cent of the 16.5 million out-of-school children being in the North and the shameful almajiri (child beggars) fuel extremism and mob action. But extremist ideology also has adherents among the elite, and the educated. Deborah’s killers were not just students of a higher institution; they are student-teachers who are expected to shape the minds of adolescents on graduation.
We reject any attempt to valorise the killers and their motives. Blasphemy cannot be a crime in a secular society. Every religion is exclusive, anchored on dogmatic beliefs by its adherents. To this extent, say sociologists, every religion is “blasphemous” of every other one because it denies the other’s fundamental tenets and prophets. At best, only incitement or pronouncements or conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace can be criminalised. And only the courts can try and impose punishment on accused persons. The Sokoto mobs violated Deborah’s fundamental rights guaranteed in Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution: right to fair hearing, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; even her right to life was denied.
There must be united action and pushback from all segments of the society against this vile murder; strong enough to permanently deter others.
Deborah’s killers must be arrested and prosecuted today. The endless cycle of killing in the name of religion must end.
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