Three Nigerians sentenced to be stoned to death for having sex outside marriage will appeal before Islamic courts this week, turning the spotlight back on a bitter battle over Sharia law.
In the best known case, 33-year-old mother-of-three Amina Lawal will on Tuesday begin her second appeal against her conviction for adultery at the Sharia Appeal Court in the northern city of Katsina.
And on Wednesday, judges in the central city of Minna are expected to hear the start of the first appeal of Fatima Usman and Ahmadu Ibrahim, former lovers who were caught and sentenced last year.
No final rulings are expected this week, and all three defendants will be able to appeal to federal courts if they lose at this stage. None of the accused are in custody, and are living in their home villages.
Lawyers for the accused believe that even leaving aside the human rights issue of allowing someone to be stoned to death, the convictions are flawed even under the tenets of Sharia.
Lawal was not given proper representation, was tried by one judge rather than the obligatory panel of four and the charge and its implications were not properly explained to her, her lawyers will argue.
”Our first priority is to save Amina’s life,” lawyer Hauwa Ibrhaim said after a previous hearing. ”Then we want to look more broadly at how the law is applied.”
The two former lovers were sentenced to death in absentia after Usman’s father took Ibrahim to court to try and force him to pay for the upkeep of a child the pair had outside wedlock.
To the father’s horror the trial hudge reclassified the civil case as a Sharia criminal trial, and sentenced both parents to death.
But beyond the rights and wrongs of the particular cases, lies the complex and angry debate over the reintroduction of Islamic law in a religiously mixed and politically troubled country of 120-million people.
Nigeria is a federation of 36 states, 12 of which have reintroduced Sharia criminal law into their penal codes since the end of military rule in 1999, despite half-hearted opposition from the federal government.
Even in the northern states where Sharia in theory holds sway, its application has been patchy. A small number of alleged thieves have had their hands chopped off, but no-one has yet been stoned to death.
But the law change has had huge social and political effects.
As the code was reintroduced into northern cities, rioting broke out between Muslims and Christians, leaving thousands dead.
Thousands more fled their homes, and their displacement altered the religious and ethnic balance in other unstable areas.
On the international level the controversy hurt Nigeria’s image just as it was shaking off the stigma of its long years of military rule.
Pictures of Lawal, a modest and gentle village housewife, cradling her infant daughter in ramshackle courtrooms while robed lawyers argue out her fate have appeared in newspapers around the world.
Rights groups and governments protested. Lawal, a Muslim, was invited to Rome to become an honorary citizen. Candlelit vigils were held outside Nigerian embassies in Europe.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian, appeared on international television to promise Lawal would be saved, but chose his words carefully.
The appeals process would be allowed to run its course, he said, and he was confident she would be cleared. There was no question of banning Sharia, which he said was a legitimate part of the Muslim way of life.
Appeals in the stoning cases were postponed until after last month’s general elections — the first since the end of military rule — in order to avoid stirring dangerous political tensions.
But the return to court of these three Sharia convicts will bring the issue to the fore once again, and become the first headache for Obasanjo as he begins his second term.
The justice minister in Obasanjo’s outgoing administration, Kanu Agabi, argued that Sharia criminal law is unconstitutional. But, anxious to avoid provoking Muslim anger, Obasanjo blocked the minister’s efforts to get rid of it.
Balancing the diverse aspirations of Nigeria’s hugely diverse ethnic and religious groups has long been a daunting challenge.
Between 1967 and 1970 a civil war left more than one-million dead. Since Obasanjo came to power in 1999 more than 10 000 people have died in mob violence and faction fighting.
International attention attracted by the high-profile stoning cases has been an unwelcome complication, as far as Nigeria’s rulers are concerned.
Asked last year by reporters why Obasanjo did not simply challenge Sharia in Nigeria’s Supreme Court, junior foreign minister Dubem Onyia snapped: ”If you want to tear this country apart, go on asking questions like that.” – Sapa-AFP