Of the Nigeria Alarming news broke yesterday about the condition of Christians in this country: a Christian student she was “stoned and burned” for being accused of blasphemy. The story in question took place in Sokoto, the capital of the northern federated entity of the same name, where Sharia law applies in addition to common law. The victim’s name was Deborah Samuel and she was an economics student at Shehu Shagari College of Education.
According to the Sokoto police and the local press, the girl was accused of blasphemy by Muslim colleagues and accused of posting “an insulting comment about the Prophet”. Mohammed‘ in a student group WhatsApp chat. This allegedly disrespectful post would have quickly unleashed the murderous rage of dozens of Islamic students, with the college officials being forced to secure Samuel in a safe haven to protect them from possible retaliation.
However, the Muslim students could have located the girl’s hiding place, stormed into that room and then dragged the unfortunate one away. The attackers would then start stoning the Christian student, and eventually they would set on fire both to the latter and to an entire wing of the institute. The harrowing images of Samuel’s assassination were captured by the students themselves using their cellphones and later posted to social media, causing them to go viral.
However, these macabre videos, which were later removed from the internet, allowed Sokoto police to track down the identities of the student’s killers. According to a police spokesman, two students involved in the murder have already been arrested. The same spokesman also assured that everyone immortalized in the videos will soon be identified and charged.
Associations defending human rights and the rights of African Christians immediately expressed their outrage at what happened to Samuel. Indeed, Amnesty International branded it as “dreadful“The planned attack on the girl, while the Nigerian Christian Association denounced the fact that Islamic fundamentalism continues to spread in the local society, even in the universities. Calls for calm and urgent demands for justice were also eventually addressed by local authorities, including Monsignor Mathew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto.