Our leaders talk a good game about defending dissidents abroad, while cracking down on thoughtcrime at home.
Nigeria’s Supreme Court is poised to hear a hugely significant blasphemy case involving a Sufi Muslim musician. Yahaya Sharif-Aminu is accused of sending an allegedly ‘blasphemous’ self-composed song to a WhatsApp group. According to a local Sharia court, Yahaya ‘praised an imam [revered in Yahaya’s tradition of Islam] to the extent it elevated him above the Prophet Muhammad’. For this ‘unforgivable’ expression of belief, the court sentenced him to death in 2020, under Kano State’s draconian Sharia Penal Code. After an appeal, his conviction was eventually overturned. But he has now been ordered to face a retrial.
