A mob lynched a Muslim man in a town in northern Nigeria on Sunday, accusing him of blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, local police and several residents said.
Usman Buda, a butcher who works in Sokoto city’s slaughterhouses, “was lynched and attacked by Muslim believers, who seriously injured him,” local police spokesman Ahmad Rufa’i said Sunday night.
The attackers fled when police arrived at the scene and Mr Buda was taken to hospital where his death was later confirmed, Mr Rufa’i added.
Under Islamic law, Sharia, which coexists with common law in a dozen states in northern Nigeria where the majority of the population is Muslim, blasphemy carries the death penalty.
The death penalty has rarely been used in recent years. In several cases, however, the accused were killed by mobs without a trial having taken place.
Mr Buda, a Salafist Muslim, was stoned and beaten to death by his colleagues after an argument, fellow butcher Isa Danhili told AFP.
“It all started when young beggars came to ask for alms in the name of Allah and the Prophet,” he told AFP.
When Mr Buda disapproved of child begging, a heated argument ensued, he added. The butcher became emotional and made “statements” that his colleagues perceived as insulting the Prophet and “charged at him with stones and sticks,” Mr Danhili said.
Video of the attack, which has been widely circulated on social media, shows a man in a blood-stained sleeveless shirt staggering and falling as a crowd throws stones at him.
A voice can be heard in the background shouting “Kill him!” in Hausa, the most commonly spoken language in northern Nigeria.
Sunday’s lynching came a year after a Christian woman was stoned to death in Sokoto over similar allegations.
In May 2022, a Christian student at Shehu Shagari College in Sokoto was stoned to death and her body burned by a group of students after she posted a message on social media that they saw as an insult to the Prophet.