Published 25th Jan, 2025

By Abimbola Abatta

Mubarak Bala, a humanist and critic of religion who recently got out of prison, would have spent 24 years behind bars for ‘blasphemy’. He only served four years and some months after considerable intervention.

Bala was arrested on April 28, 2020, for his Facebook posts considered blasphemous and insulting to Islam. In 2022, a Kano State High Court sentenced him to 24 years in prison, by which time he had stayed in custody for two years.

Fast forward to May 2024, the Court of Appeal in Kano ruled Bala’s prison sentence as “excessive” and reduced it. He got out months later.

One of the court documents obtained by FIJ showed that there were 18 counts of charge against Bala, and he was sentenced under sections 114 and 210 of the Penal Code. He got 24 years for the offences punishable under Section 114 and 16 years under Section 210.

Also, the sentences were to run concurrently, meaning he would have been in prison for 24 years without an option of a fine.

The charges, bordering on different “blasphemous statements” posted on his Facebook page in April 2020, asserted that, by making those posts public, Bala’s actions were deemed “insulting to the religion of Islam, the entire followers in Kano State, calculated to cause breach of public peace…”

When people are arrested and arraigned for “blasphemous statements” in northern Nigeria, they are often charged under the sections of the Penal Code that address public disturbance and insult to religion.

For instance, Rhoda Jatau, a health worker in Bauchi State, was charged under sections 114 and 206 of the State Penal Code for sharing a video that condemned the death of Deborah Yakubu, the Sokoto State student who was lynched to death by Muslim fanatics in 2022. 

While Section 114 of the Penal Code in Bauchi makes a provision of up to three years imprisonment or a fine of N150,000 or both for anyone guilty of inciting disturbance, Section 206 says anyone convicted for insulting or inciting contempt of religious creed would get up to a two-year prison sentence or with a fine or both.

FIJ found that the content of the sections of the Penal Code that saw to the incarceration of Jatau in Bauchi bears a semblance to the sections 114 and 210 used to punish Bala in Kano.

Section 114 of the Kano State Penal Code, which is on inciting disturbance, reads: “Whoever does any act with intent to cause or which is likely to cause a breach of the peace or disturb the public peace, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years or with a fine which may extend to fifteen thousand naira or with both.”

Section 210, on insulting or exciting contempt of religious creed, states: Whoever, by any means, publicly insults or seeks to incite contempt of any religion in such a manner as to be likely to lead to a breach of the peace, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with a fine or with both.

Interestingly, none of these sections mentions words such as “blasphemy”, “blaspheme”, “blasphemous acts” or “blasphemous statement”.

FIJ scrutinised the court documents and found that the trial court “pursuant to Section 276 (1)(b) of the ACJL 2019 of Kano State went ahead and convicted the appellant as charged for each of the 18 counts of charge”.

What Constitutes Blasphemy?

When a Nigerian is attacked, lynched, arrested or jailed for acts or remarks deemed blasphemous, questions bordering on the legality or constitutional provision for a blasphemy offence often arise.

This article on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) website states that Nigeria’s blasphemy laws have no place in modern society because they “are an offence against reason, justice and the right of the individual to think and live freely”.

To understand what the laws say about blasphemy in Nigeria using Bala’s arrest and imprisonment as a case study, FIJ spoke with an associate professor of Islamic law and a human rights lawyer.

Muhammad Kamaldeen Imam-Tamim, an associate professor in the Department of Islamic Law, at the University of Ilorin, told FIJ that the northern region integrated Sharia punishments into the existing penal code framework but made separate provisions for non-Muslims.

“For clarification, they (northern states) have conflated the Penal Code and the Sharia Penal Code into one. They have one law, but even the one law they have caters to the non-Muslims separately from the Muslims,” the Islamic Law scholar told FIJ.

He noted that contrary to the perception that Bala’s arrest was based on Sharia law, it was based on Nigerian law. “But then, the Sharia law is not a blanket rule applied without any condition,” Imam-Tamim said.

He explained that blasphemy under the Sharia is a serious case, but it comes with its own rules and conditions. One, the accuser, which is the state, must be able to prove the offence of blasphemy beyond reasonable doubt.

According to the professor of Islamic Law, sharp divisions exist in the punishment for blasphemy, particularly concerning the Prophet Muhammad. However, irrespective of the differences in perspectives, Sharia does not permit individuals to take the law into their own hands.

“This issue of blasphemy has created a lot of problems for us in Nigeria, but one thing is certain: no individual is allowed, even under Sharia, to take the law into their own hands just for the fact that somebody commits blasphemy,” Imam-Tamim explained.

“It is not a civil offence but a state criminal offence, so the power to prosecute, arrest and chastise whoever does that rests solely on the state.”

One could commit blasphemy against Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. If the offence of blasphemy is committed against the former, it is believed that the state would have to take charge. However, even if the state steps in, there is no declared punishment for such a person.

“It is believed that Allah knows how to deal with that person because Muslims believe that Allah created that person, and he or she would still go back to him to face the consequences of his actions in this world,” Imam-Tamim said.

“That is what the Sharia says about that. This does not mean that we will not find some other fringe positions on this matter. The reason for this is because the Quran and the Hadith (the two benchmarks from where the Sharia law extracts primary rulings) make no provision for the punishment for the person who defames Allah.”

Concerning blasphemous remarks against the Prophet, some scholars argue that if the Prophet were alive, he alone has the right to report to the authority that his integrity has been maligned or impugned.

Other scholars believe the prophet’s followers should defend his dignity and not allow anybody to tarnish his integrity.

Imam-Tamim disclosed that sections 114 and 210, under which Bala was arrested and prosecuted, were not referring to blasphemy. He explained that the controversy began when those accusing him (Bala) of defaming the prophet demanded the application of Sharia punishment in response to his Facebook posts in April 2020.

FIJ learnt that because Bala was arrested amid these demands, it was natural for many people to assume that he was being punished according to the rules of Sharia.

“I am telling you categorically that he was not arrested or tried under the rule of Sharia. He was arrested and tried according to the Nigerian law,” said Imam-Tamim.

“The kind of statements that Bala was making about the religion of Islam, Muslims and the Prophet of Islam were unprovoked, and when he was doing that, some people had also started to threaten him. Cyberbullying and cyber threats had started coming in.”

‘Bala’s Arrest Was to Prevent Public Disturbance’

According to the Islamic law expert, some individuals would likely have taken the law into their own hands, causing public disturbance, if the government had not intervened through the police by arresting Bala in 2020.

“Section 4 of the Police Act gives the Nigerian police the power to prevent any kind of crime that can occur in society. The law does not allow the police to sit back and allow crimes to occur before they start to look for who committed the crime. If they get hints that certain crimes are to be committed, then they have the right,” Imam-Tamim told FIJ.

“That is one of the reasons for which he was arrested — disturbance of public peace. It has nothing to do with Sharia at all. If the police had not done anything, Bala would have been hunted down, so the police had to be proactive.

“When it comes to the law, the provisions in sections 114 and 210 of the Penal Code are from the Nigerian law, not from the Sharia.”

He also noted that blasphemy itself falls under the Tazir, which is the broad category for undefined offences under the Sharia law. These offences are undefined because their punishments are not clearly stated in the Quran or the Hadith, which contains the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad.

Consequently, judges and the states have the liberty to determine the kind of punishment they feel whoever commits those kinds of offences deserves.

‘The Days of Blasphemy Laws Are Limited’

Also speaking with FIJ, Kola Alapinni, an international human rights lawyer, who is privy to the legal intricacies surrounding Bala’s arrest and incarceration, challenged the constitutionality of the Sharia law.

Alapinni hinted that the provisions of the Sharia Law practised in the northern region contravene several international human rights treaties to which Nigeria has committed itself.

He emphasised the need to abolish blasphemy laws that target religious minorities because such laws restrict individuals like Bala from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of religion, thought and expression.

“Nigeria has obligations under international human rights laws and treaties it willingly signed up to. We have a duty to uphold those laws,” Alapinni told FIJ.

“Also, the Kano State Sharia Penal Code violates several provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We cannot have a Sharia Penal Code that allows for stoning people to death, amputation of limbs and lashing people with strokes of the cane whilst we are signatories to international human rights instruments. Those offending parts to the Constitution have to be struck down by the Supreme Court.”

On Bala’s case, he drew attention to jurisdiction concerns surrounding the trial. FIJ is aware that although Bala is a native of Kano State, he was residing in Kaduna State at the time of his arrest and had not been to Kano in years.

However, because the complaint against him was made in Kano, he was arrested in Kaduna and transferred to Kano, where he faced trial and was sentenced to prison.

“Kano State invoked its jurisdiction over the case because a complaint was made in Kano State by a complainant who lives in Kano and claimed to have read the alleged offensive words on Facebook in Kano State. This is the realm of what is called Conflict of Laws in legal jurisprudence,” said the lawyer.

Alapinni also noted that based on sections 114 and 210 of the Kano State Penal Code, Bala’s sentencing should have been three years and two years respectively, rather than the concurrent sentences of 24 and 16 years that he got.

This excessive sentencing led the appeal court to overturn the judgment of the Kano court. Alapinni said, “That was what Mubarak had calculated having stayed in custody for four years at that time. He reckoned he would have served the requisite time already and he would be set free.”

On whether the Penal Code in Kano differed from the Sharia law, he said, “Kano State has a law known as the Kano State Sharia Penal Code Law of 2000. It is a state law promulgated after the implementation of full Sharia Criminal Law jurisprudence.

“My position is that the law is unconstitutional to the extent of its inconsistency. And we are challenging this at the Supreme Court already.

“Its (blasphemy offence) days are limited; it’s only a matter of time.”

Abimbola Abatta is a reporter with FIJ, writing reports in partnership with Report for the World which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.

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