The Freethinker reported in March on the humanist Mubarak Bala’s impending trial for blasphemy in Kano, northern Nigeria. His bail application was rejected by the Kano High Court on 4th April. On 5th April, he suddenly, and without previously notifying his legal team, changed his plea to guilty. The judge then sentenced him to 24 years’ imprisonment. This sentence, in the view of James Ibor, the head of Bala’s legal team, is probably unlawful, and the case is being appealed. In the meantime, Bala remains in custody in Kano State Prison.

The High Court of Abuja had granted a previous bail application back in December 2020, but its order for Bala’s immediate release had simply been ignored in Kano. At the bail hearing in Kano, his team ‘argued for bail extensively,’ Ibor told me via Zoom. ‘But unfortunately the court denied it on the ground that he would not be safe if he was released.’

This explanation, in Ibor’s view, was disingenuous. ‘They were using his incarceration as a total tool to compel him. The inmates actually told him while he was in custody that the court would not grant him bail – and that’s what happened.’ Leo Igwe, a co-founder of the Humanist Association and leader of the campaign to free Bala, agrees. Had the authorities really been concerned for Bala’s safety, he argues, ‘they shouldn’t have transferred him to Kano [from Kaduna] in the first place, where he wasn’t living and where even the so-called offence didn’t happen.’

The bail hearing took place on a Monday, and the trial on Tuesday. The previous Friday, just before Ibor himself arrived in Kano, the prosecution filed two amendments to the charge sheet, increasing the number of charges from ten to 17. Immediately after the bail application had been refused, they filed yet another amendment to increase the number to 18. ‘Strategically, we chose not to object,’ says Ibor, ‘because they were all of them full of repetitions and grossly defective.’ Instead, they decided to proceed to trial, in order to avoid any further prevaricating by the other side.

It came as a shock to Ibor when Bala suddenly changed his plea to guilty on the morning of the trial: ‘I was frustrated and confused.’ He managed to persuade the court to stand down for 15 minutes while he consulted his client privately. Bala then explained that he had ‘lost faith in the judge and the justice system in Kano’, and was worried that if he won his case, he would be killed.

Ibor argued that the press were there, and members of the international community (the US in particular had sent trial observers). The judge, he told Bala at the time, might ‘caution himself and try to do the right thing’. Bala seemed to be persuaded to change his plea back to not guilty. ‘But unfortunately, when we got back to court, he again repeated that he was guilty,’ says Ibor, ‘So at that point, there was nothing I could do.’ According to Ibor, Bala later explained that he wanted his legal team to be safe as much as himself: ‘There would likely have been riots if he had been acquitted.’ As Igwe puts it, ‘he said that there was no way they could have won in Kano and remained alive.’ It is abundantly clear that Bala’s change to a guilty plea was a matter of expediency only, necessitated by the fear of violent reprisals. ‘There is nothing to apologise for, absolutely nothing,’ says Igwe.

Ibor argues that the sentence imposed on Bala was ‘unknown to law’. According to him, the maximum sentence should have been five years, under the two provisions Bala was charged with, sections 210 (‘insult to a particular religion’) and 114 (‘acts calculated to cause a breach of public peace’) of the Kano Penal Code.

For the record, the Freethinker is now able to publish the key posts on Bala’s Facebook page in April 2020 on which the prosecution relied, as quoted on the charge sheet (a public document):

1. ‘There’s no difference between the prophet TB Joshua (S.A.W) of Lagos State and Muhammadu (A.S) of Saudiyya. The one in Nigeria is better because he is not a terrorist.’

[T.B. Joshua was a Nigerian pastor and televangelist. ‘S.A.W.’, conventionally used of Mohammed, means ‘peace and blessings of Allah be upon him’; ‘A.S.’, meaning ‘peace be upon him,’ is conventionally used of lesser prophets. Bala seems to have reversed the two. This statement, in Hausa, was posted on 25th April 2020 – three days before his arrest.]

2. ‘Islamic religion is kafirci against the original Kano religion of Tsumburbura mai Sawaba, (the goddess that was worshiped at sometime). May Alliya (the goddess) guide Kano people.’[‘Kafirci’ means ‘unbelief or a state of non-belief’; ‘describing Islam as kafirci delegitimises it,’ according to Igwe. This statement was originally in Hausa.]

3. ‘Muslims are about to start fasting to the God that refused to eradicate their poverty despite the fact that they prayed 17 times everyday. How i wish Allah exist.’ [Originally in Hausa.]

4. ‘There are no flying horses, there is no Allah, Islam is exactly as Boko Haram practices it. Whoever believes religion has been duped.’ [Originally in English.]

5. ‘If you can’t take the blasphemy against Islam, criticizism (sic) of its doctrines, this page is not for you. I have not even started ooo’ [Originally in English.]

According to the transcript of the trial (a public document), the judge, in his ruling, stated that [sic]:

‘No one stops him [Bala] from any religion, but he should understand that where his intent stops, the intent of another person start, therefore the intent that he is thinking that he has to say whatever he wants to say or put anything is not absolute. He should be careful. There are a lot of people that may have the same ideology but not expose themselves like that.

‘He should go and believe in his own faith and allow others to believe in their own faith. There is no compulsion in religion not to take of insulting any particular religion for that matter.

‘I hope his stay in correctional center would sure serve him a great lesson and others.’

Under Nigerian law, a defendant who pleads guilty should usually receive a reduction in sentence. But that did not happen, says Ibor. ‘The judge told me that I was lucky that he had not imposed a death sentence’ – even though this would have been unlawful, as Bala was being tried under customary (secular) and not sharia law, as he was not a Muslim.

Igwe argues that the length of the sentence is ‘unprecedented’ for these offences. ‘But it is all part of the calculated attempt to make sure that this guy is shut out, he’s behind bars, and that a message of oppression is sent to people like him.’

It was particularly difficult for Bala to be in prison during Ramadan. According to Ibor, there were ‘about 1700 inmates, all of them Muslims, fasting. He’s the only one who eats, and they constantly remind him that he’s an unbeliever and he deserves to die.’ He has also experienced threats, as well as ‘bullying from the very day he was admitted into the facility.’

Bala has maintained his humanist convictions. But he has faced immense pressure, even in matters as personal as trying to give his wife, Amina Ahmed, a hug when she came to visit. For strict Muslims, public displays of affection are not allowed, even between couples. When the pair stood up to hug, the inmates ‘shouted down at them and warned him never to try it,’ says Ibor, ‘Why should he hug? He said, “it’s my wife,” they said, “how dare you?”’ Amina now faces the prospect of continuing to bring up their son, Sodangi, alone, possibly for the whole of his childhood. ‘I think she was devastated by the judgment,’ says Igwe. ‘But she’s finding a way to cope with this, what has been a very difficult situation for her and the baby and the entire family.’

Prison conditions have been tough in other ways too. Bala has had access to writing materials, and communicated regularly with Ibor and others. But some of his letters never arrived, or were censored. He has shared a cell with up to nine other inmates. Sometimes, says Ibor, it has been ‘a very tiny cell where it’s even difficult for him to move around or adjust. He has had to stay in a particular position for a long time because there are so many people in it.’ As for the food, ‘it is really horrible.’

‘His rights have been so clearly violated in so many different ways,’ says Andrew Copson, president of Humanists International, which has supported Bala and his family since he was first detained in April 2020. ‘Every aspect of his case is a disgrace’ – from the denial of access to justice, to the displacement from Kaduna, where he was arrested, to Kano, to the ‘overblown’ charges.

On 12th May, just over a month after Bala’s trial, Deborah Samuel, a Home Economics student and Christian in Sokoto State, also in Nigeria’s Muslim north, was beaten to death and set alight by Muslim fellow students who accused her of blasphemy. According to Reuters via the Guardian, a student posted an ‘Islamic’ message on her department’s WhatsApp group. In response, she posted an audio recording that protested against the use of the group for religious broadcasting, and allegedly contained ‘blasphemous comments on the prophet of Islam’. The Peoples Gazette, an Abuja-based paper, shared a chilling video of a man apparently confessing to Samuel’s murder and showing a matchbox which he appears to say he had ‘used in setting her ablaze’. When two suspects were arrested, a mob of ‘Muslim youths’ rampaged through the city ‘lighting bonfires’ and demanding their release.

The suspects are currently awaiting trial; a large group of Muslim lawyers appeared in court to support them in their first appearance in court. However, they have not been charged with murder, but with the lesser offences of ‘criminal conspiracy and inciting public disturbance’. This has been criticised by the Nigerian Bar Association, which called on the Sokoto State Government to bring ‘charges that truly reflect the gravity of the situation’; the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, described them as ‘watery charges’.

There is a disquieting contrast between the harsh treatment of Mubarak Bala, held in custody without trial for nearly two years and now sentenced to twenty-four, and the lenient treatment of Deborah Samuel’s alleged killers. This difference reveals how far fundamentalist Islam is entrenched in the culture of northern Nigeria, and underlines its proponents’ utter disregard for human dignity or rights. It has been argued that Samuel’s case is part of a trend of Islamist persecution of Christians in both the north and the south. However, as Bala’s case demonstrates, the persecution is not confined to Christianity, but extends to anyone who dares to criticise Islam or resist its influence.

To some extent, the problem of illegitimate influence on the judiciary is one that affects the whole country. ‘I want to be very frank with you,’ says Ibor, ‘Nigeria has no respect for the fundamental rights of citizens. What plays here is usually politics and religion, and religion itself is politics. The judiciary of Nigeria is not independent.’

Yet the idea that blasphemy against Islam in particular is a crime that merits death – which it is not under the secular Nigerian constitution but only, at most, under sharia law – is shared by high-ranking clerics. In an interview with the Nigerian newspaper The Punch, Professor Ibrahim Maqari, the imam of the National Mosque of Abuja, said that ‘she [Deborah Samuel] deserves death, there is no doubt about it … Nobody can insult the prophet the way the girl did and think they can go untouched.’ Although Maqari argued that it should be the state authorities who carried out such punishments, he also said that ‘extrajudicial killings’ were ‘something that we cannot stop so far the government does not fulfill its responsibilities.’ In other words, the authorities have a ‘responsibility’ to execute blasphemers; if not, do not be surprised if someone else does it for them.

In cases like Bala’s, Ibor stresses the role that the international community can play: ‘They have a lot of influence on Nigeria.’ Andrew Copson is one of those who have been involved, on behalf of Humanists International, in lobbying the UK government. Along with the US, Norway, and others, the UK has raised Bala’s situation with the Nigerian government through diplomatic channels. While the US has led the efforts, Copson stresses the ‘impressive communal effort that has been exerted on Mubarak’s behalf.’

Yet diplomatic pressure is probably only a short-term solution. After all, Western governments and NGOs may be able to help individuals like Bala, but it is difficult to see how much influence they can exert over a country of 216 million people speaking around 500 languages, and one in which Christian, Muslim and local religious traditions are deeply engrained.

On the other hand, it is people like Bala who have been starting, very slowly, to open people’s minds and change the culture from within, by holding meetings in person or online, campaigning through groups like the Humanist Association of Nigeria or the Atheist Society of Nigeria, and above all, criticising religion, at great personal risk. That is why his ongoing detention is such a blow for freedom of conscience and expression in northern Nigeria: the incipient humanist movement has lost its leader. Bala’s treatment demonstrates how firm a grip the religious authorities, backed by the threat of mob violence, continue to have over the justice system and public opinion.

The conclusion is that future progress in this region is likely to come only through a long and painful process of attrition. In the meantime, an innocent student has been brutally murdered, a man faces decades in prison for criticising an idea, and Sodangi is growing up without a father. In countries where Islam has political power, the price of dissent is high indeed.

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This article provides an update on Bala’s situation. I spoke via Zoom and email to Leo Igwe and to Amina Ahmed, Bala’s wife and mother of his son, Sodangi.

Update on the update – 25th March 2022

This article was first posted on 19^th March. It was removed on 21^st March at the request of Humanists International, on behalf of Bala’s legal team. It is now being reposted with the removal of information which the lawyers fear might endanger Bala’s safety, including the dates of the bail hearing and trial, the name of the prison in Kano where he has been held for over a year, and the list of the ‘blasphemous’ statements with which he is being charged. (The Freethinker had not previously been informed that posting this material might affect Bala’s situation.) According to Emma Wadsworth-Jones, Humanists At Risk Coordinator,

‘The information contained on the dates of the hearing is sensitive and could put the lives of Mubarak and his legal team in jeopardy. The dates of the hearing have purposefully been withheld to prevent vigilantes in Nigeria from taking matter into their own hands. Additionally, the publication of the text of his posts…before the hearing is liable to inflame already high tensions.’

The request demonstrates just how perilous Bala’s situation is, both for him and even for his lawyers, as long as he remains in Kano. The article below gives further details about how difficult it is to be a non-Muslim in northern Nigeria. It also considers why Bala might have annoyed the authorities so much – not just through mocking and criticising certain beliefs and practices of Islam on social media, but through inspiring a sort of humanist awakening.

It is with a heavy heart, however, that I have removed the text of Bala’s ‘blasphemous’ posts. The Freethinker has a long history of resisting censorship of supposed blasphemies. It is a matter of pride that our first editor, G.W. Foote, went to prison in England for using satire to question Christianity in this very paper.

For several years now there has been a trend, not just in Nigeria but also in Europe, of silencing those who dare to criticise Islam, or even show materials criticising it – one might think of Charlie Hebdo or Samuel Paty in France, as well as the Batley Grammar teacher in England, whose very identity has been erased from the public record.

It is ironic that the ‘blasphemous’ statements which Bala made of his own free will, and for which he has been suffering for nearly two years, must be suppressed by those defending him, because they fear that republishing the statements before his trial would provoke his opponents into further acts of aggression and injustice. Where will all this end?  

Arrest and detention

Bala has been detained, on the charge of blasphemy in relation to some Facebook posts, since 28th April 2020. On 28th April, he was arrested and put in a police cell in Kaduna state; on 30th April, he was transferred to to the State Police Command in neighbouring Kano, where he was held in solitary confinement and incomunicado. At some point thereafter he was transferred to a prison in Kano State. He was not able to meet with a lawyer until October 2020. After a series of legal battles, a judge in Abuja, the federal capital, granted an application for Bala’s immediate release on bail on 21st December 2020. (The order for release on bail can be viewed towards the bottom of this report by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism.) However, he was not released. Formal charges against him were only issued on 3rd August 2021. While in prison, he was, in September 2021, denied access to medical treatment for high blood pressure. Humanists International have provided him with legal support, and maintained a record of his case as it develops.

The effect of prison

Neither Igwe nor Bala’s wife, Amina Ahmed, was able to attend the arraignment. However, according to one source, provided on the condition of anonymity, Bala ‘looked emaciated…he has not been well taken care of.’ The conditions in the prison are ‘awful’, says Ahmed. Her husband has had difficulties in accessing not only healthcare but even food while in prison. ‘Our prison service has a history of not just poor treatment, but also in terms of denying people who are detained their basic rights,’ says Igwe. The Humanists wrote to the director of prisons, as well as to Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, to try to ensure that the necessary treatment was provided to Bala. Over such a long period, however, it was difficult to keep up the pressure on the authorities consistently. ‘Immediately there’s no pressure,’ says Igwe, ‘The whole thing goes back to the status quo.’

How Bala’s detention has affected his family

Mubarak Bala and Amina Ahmed were married in August 2019. Ahmed gave birth to Sodangi in Abuja in March 2020, just six weeks before his father was arrested. She had just arrived home from hospital, and was still recovering from a caesarean section and postpartum trauma, when Igwe called her to say that her husband had disappeared. At first she did not believe it. ‘I said, maybe they are going to release him that evening, or after some days.’ In the event, it was eight months before she was able to see him – in prison.

The nearly two years have been an ordeal. To start with, there has been the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen to Bala. In addition, the stigma associated with being an atheist is such that Ahmed has only felt able to tell a few of her closest friends what she has been going through. She worries that other colleagues will be ‘judgemental’ rather than sympathetic, and will take the view that her husband ‘should be tried like everyone else, if he offended anyone.’

Sodangi has hardly seen his father in the first two years of his life. When his mother took him to visit Bala in prison in November 2021, she says, ‘he was just staring at his father and he didn’t allow him to touch him. He was just running away from him and was crying.’ At home, her mother has moved in to help her with the baby. Ahmed has also received financial support from the Humanist associations. ‘I’m so grateful because I didn’t believe that Mubarak and I would feel loved like this.’

Both Ahmed and Bala were brought up in traditional Muslim families. These days, she too identifies with humanist values, ‘like not discriminating against people, not judging people based on their belief.’ It is characteristic that Bala’s own best friend from childhood should be a practising Muslim. ‘Mubarak’s situation pains him, too,’ Ahmed says. ‘He doesn’t judge Mubarak, because he knows that he is a wonderful person.’

The charges

The charges against Bala were brought on an application by the Chief State Counsel of Kano State Ministry of Justice on behalf of the Attorney General. The charge sheet, which is dated 23rd June 2021, and was made available to the Freethinker, lists ten separate ‘heads of charge’ against Bala. (We cannot comment on the accuracy of these allegations.)

All the heads of charge involve posts that Bala is said to have made on his Facebook account in April 2020. These posts, the prosecution alleges, contained a total of five distinct statements that supposedly blasphemed against Islam. Three were in Hausa, a regional language, and two in English; some appear to have been posted more than once.

By posting these statements on social media, the prosecution alleges, Bala ‘insult[ed] the religion of Islam its followers in Kano State, calculated to cause breach of public peace and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 210 of the Penal Code [of Kano State].’ Elsewhere on the charge sheet, the statements are described as ‘insulting the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W), the religion of Islam and its followers in Kano State which excited contempt of religious creed’ or as being ‘contemptuous to the religion of Islam’.

The Nigerian Criminal Code Act (s. 204) provides that the offence of ‘insult to religion’ is punishable by up to two years in prison. According to Amnesty International, the Kano State Code has a similar provision (the Freethinker was not able to access the Code). The matter is complicated by the fact that, in northern Nigeria, sharia law operates in parallel to customary, or secular, law.

Bala, as a non-Muslim, is being tried under customary law. On this basis, if he is convicted, the period of his past detention could be sufficient to discharge the statutory penalty. ‘But nobody knows whether that will satisfy the Islamic Establishment behind his arrest and detention,’ says Igwe. Under sharia law, Bala would potentially be liable to much harsher penalties, even up to execution.

The sharia courts in Kano do not shrink from imposing harsh penalties for blasphemy on those within their jurisdiction. This is shown by two cases from August 2020 – a few months after Bala’s arrest. A sharia court sentenced an Islamic gospel musician, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, to death for allegedly saying that the founder of the Islamic Tijjaniya sect was ‘bigger than Prophet Muhammad’; the same court sentenced a 13-year-old boy, Umar Farouk, to ten years’ imprisonment with menial labour for using ‘foul language against God’ during an argument with a friend.

A retrial of Sharif-Aminu’s case has since been ordered, while Farouk’s conviction was overturned by a higher court. But others may not be so lucky. Even if the justice system does not harm them, there is always the risk that the mob may take matters into their own hands – which is one of the concerns in Bala’s case.

Islam in northern Nigeria

The reasons underlying Bala’s treatment in Kano are complicated. Historically, the north of Nigeria has been Muslim-majority since 1804, when the ulama (learned religious scholar) Usman Dan Fodiyo led a jihad against the Hausa kingdoms of western Africa and established the Sokoto Caliphate there. The British conquered the caliphate in the early 1900s. When they unified Nigeria as a single Colony and Protectorate in 1914, they retained a division between the northern and southern provinces. The Muslim influence in the north and the Christian influence from missionaries and other Europeans in the south, in line with colonial policy, increasingly took the place of traditional religions – at least officially. Nigeria achieved independence in 1960; however, the historic divisions between Muslim north and Christian south persist.

The reality, says Igwe, is that ‘you cannot oppose Islam and succeed politically in the north.’ Not only are the political elite themselves Muslim, but in one way or another, they all ‘draw their political base from the ulamas and from the religious establishment.’ Indeed, it would be ‘political suicide’ for them to go against the ulamas’ dictates. ‘And so the ulamas would be the ones who would be saying that Mubarak Bala should have a serious punishment.’ Bala’s own father is an ulama. In 2014, he had his son placed in a psychiatric ward, where he was detained against his will for 18 days, in order to supposedly ‘cure’ his atheism. It is understood that the two are still estranged.

A humanist ‘awakening’ in northern Nigeria

Before his arrest, Bala worked as an engineer for an electricity company in Kaduna, commuting in from Abuja, the federal capital, where he lived with his wife. He spent his spare time campaigning and trying to raise awareness of ‘the excesses and extremism that are embedded in the Islamic religious practice in northern Nigeria,’ says Igwe. ‘He was trying to lead an awakening of the people.’ Bala worked particularly hard to ‘mobilize young people and get them to begin to openly express critical views with regard to religion, Islam, jihad, Boko Haram, and the very disturbing way religion mixes with politics and with every other aspect of life in the region.’ He held face-to-face meetings, but was increasingly moving to online campaigns because of the risks of ‘hostility’ associated with personal appearances.

Bala’s championing of atheism and humanism was having some success, especially on social media. A 2018 report by Al Jazeera claimed that atheism, although still largely an ‘underground movement’ in Nigeria, was ‘increasingly reported among millennials.’ Bala was the only atheist interviewed who was willing to let Al Jazeera use his real name. ‘When he was arrested,’ says Igwe, ‘Somebody called me on phone and told me that there were thousands of [atheists] in Northern Nigeria, and many of them were actually finding a voice. They were finding a platform based on what Mubarak was doing.’

Bala’s success was the problem. ‘They [the Islamic authorities] just don’t like that name, “atheist”,’ says Igwe. ‘It invokes a lot of anxiety and hostility in people.’ There was sufficient concern about the atheist movement that on 12th September 2019, as Igwe reported in The Maravi Post, three academics held a seminar at Bayero University, Kano, on ‘Social media and the rise of atheism among the Muslim youths in northern Nigeria: causes, consequences and recommendations’.

Although the seminar was held at the ‘Centre for Islamic Civilization and Interfaith Dialogue’, as Igwe pointed out, ‘it is not clear how the centre goes about the interfaith dialogue because no evidence of interfaith communications exists on their web site’ – let alone communication between believers and atheists.

After Bala’s imprisonment, Igwe recalls, there was a sense of ‘relief across the Islamic community.’ His opponents took to social media to celebrate his punishment. Twitter posts carried vicious messages. ‘Blaspheme against our Prophet is a capital offense,’ wrote one user calling himself Kawu Garba, ‘And if he’s allowed free without penalty we will kill him.’

Despite the unlawfulness, not to say inhumanity, of Bala’s treatment by the secular authorities, there was a deafening silence from the religious contingent. ‘No one in his local area in Kano has called for his release,’ says Igwe. ‘I think that they’re silent because they have accomplished their goal.’

‘Insulting religion’

On the face of it, Bala is being prosecuted for a pure crime of words, which do no harm to any living individual or any identifiable group. It is bad enough that ‘insulting religion’ is an offence on the Nigerian statute book; the Kano authorities seem to have pursued Bala with vindictiveness as well as utter disregard for due process. In all the circumstances, it seems clear that they perceive social media posts as a real threat to the authority of Islam in their region.

Even in countries where insulting religion is not (for now) a crime, this charge is often made against people who mock religious ideas or practices that they consider absurd. ‘Insulting a religion’ is also speciously equated with the nebulous charge of insulting the worldwide population of its adherents. In the UK, this kind of rhetoric was used in the Batley Grammar case.

As the detention of Mubarak Bala shows, to criminalise speech about a controversial subject – whether religion or anything else – is to hand power to those who want to impose their views on others. Those who have reservations about free speech in countries like the UK might ask themselves what they would do in Bala’s position.

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