KANO/LAGOS (Reuters) – A Nigerian courtroom on Thursday will hear a challenge in opposition to sharia law in the principally Muslim northern state of Kano, in a case that’s set to reignite debate on the place of spiritual legal guidelines in a rustic whose structure is impartial on faith.
Nigeria is split between the largely Christian south and principally Muslim north. Kano is likely one of the foremost states that enforces sharia or Islamic spiritual law, together with the dying penalty in opposition to blasphemy.
In 2020, a 22-year-old singer, Yahaya Aminu Sharif, was sentenced to dying whereas a teen was jailed for 10 years by Kano Sharia Court over accusations of blasphemy. The ruling drew worldwide outcry and the secular department of the state’s excessive courtroom freed {the teenager} however ordered a retrial for Sharif.
Sharif, who’s in custody, desires the Appeal Court to declare the sharia penal code unconstitutional and set him free, courtroom paperwork seen by Reuters confirmed. A judgment will probably be delivered inside three months.
“A round nation equivalent to ours has specified that the state shouldn’t be discovered selling one faith above one other. Clearly, the sharia law as being practised jeopardises that,” Kola Alapinni, the lawyer representing Sharif, informed Reuters.
Sharif is being held in a jail exterior Kano for his security, Alapinni stated, including that the singer wouldn’t attend the attraction listening to to “keep away from inflaming the scenario.”
Protesters in Kano destroyed Sharif’s house final yr, forcing his household to flee.
The Kano state authorities is opposing the attraction, arguing that sharia law doesn’t violate the structure, a view held by many in northern Nigeria.
“As a Muslim, I help the sharia penal code, and it’s necessary for us to help it … it is not going to hurt anybody,” stated Abdulwahab Abdallah, an area sheikh.
Religious tensions in the nation of over 200 million persons are frequent and sometimes flip violent as some resort to mob rule.
That was the case with a feminine faculty scholar in northwestern Sokoto state who was final month stoned and burned to dying by fellow college students who accused her of insulting the Prophet Mohammad on WhatsApp.
More than 30 legal professionals lined up in courtroom to defend two males who have been linked to the scholar’s dying. In distinction, Sharif was tried with out authorized illustration as a result of no lawyer in Kano would take up his case, fearing public backlash, stated Alapinni, a human rights lawyer from Abuja.
Some spiritual students in Nigeria stated sharia ought to be maintained however might be restricted to coping with private issues like marriage and divorce, inheritance and custody of youngsters and never capital punishment.
(Reporting by Hamza Ibrahim in Kano and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Lagos; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
