A Nigerian Christian has been forced to pay a massive fine in order to escape a six-year jail term after Muslim vigilantes caught him selling beer in the Zamfara state.
Government spokesperson Ibrahim Birnin-Magaji said that the supermarket owner had been caught with 100 crates of beer in his store in the state capital Gusau by the ”Hisbah”, a state-endorsed force charged with enforcing Sharia’s strict rules on moral conduct.
On Friday, the man — identified simply as Fred — was convicted in a magistrate’s court and fined 400 000 naira ($2 945), a small fortune in a poverty-stricken country where three-quarters of the population live on less than one dollar per day.
”The 100 cartons of beer were found in his supermarket by a group of hisbah while on patrol in Tudunwada area of the city,” said Birnin-Magaji in a telephone interview.
”To escape spending six years in jail Mr Fred paid the 400 000 naira fine after which the beer was destroyed at the order of the judge,” he said.
The judgement is likely to arouse the anger of northern Nigeria’s Christian minority, who have argued that Sharia law should apply only to Muslims and fear what they see as the gradual ”Islamisation” of a large swathe of the religiously and ethnically mixed west African country.
”The law is not meant to victimise anybody but to rid the state, which practises Sharia, of moral vices and drinking is one of those vices,” said Birnin-Magaji. ”If the supply of beer is cut off those who drink will not find beer and the best way to cut off the supply is by being hard on its sellers.”
”If a beer seller is pays a fine of 400 000 naira or goes to jail for six years that will teach him a lesson and he will change his business,” he said. – Sapa-AFP