On April 9, 2025, the Financial Neighborhood of West African States (ECOWAS) Courtroom of Justice (ECJ) made a landmark judgment, holding sure points of the Kano State’s blasphemy legal guidelines in Nigeria to be incompatible with worldwide human rights requirements, extra significantly, the precise to freedom of expression.
The choice has induced nice controversy over balancing worldwide human rights obligations and nationwide legal guidelines, significantly in locations like northern Nigeria the place faith and cultural values are supreme.
Overview of the ECOWAS Courtroom judgmentIn a landmark judgment, the ECJ held that sure provisions of Kano State legal regulation had been incompatible with Nigeria’s worldwide human rights obligations. Particularly, the Courtroom invalidated Part 210 of the Kano State Penal Code and Part 382(b) of the Kano State Sharia Penal Code Regulation (2000), which each make it against the law to do sure issues which might be understood to quantity to blasphemy, for example, insulting spiritual figures just like the Prophet Muhammad. The Courtroom held that the mentioned provisions are badly drafted, too basic, and too repressive, significantly as they invoke extreme punishment within the guise of the dying penalty.
Primarily based on Nigeria’s worldwide obligation underneath the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Courtroom’s argument was based mostly on the doctrines of necessity, proportionality, and rule of regulation in legal regulation. In its ruling, it dominated that the regulation had failed these basic exams and thus violated the precise to truthful trial in addition to freedom of expression. Kano State was thus ordered to repeal or amend the offending laws in keeping with worldwide authorized expectations.
Inserting blasphemy legal guidelines in context in NigeriaNigerian blasphemy legal guidelines are most sturdy in Nigeria’s twelve northern states the place the Sharia authorized system coexists with the frequent regulation and customary regulation. They make it against the law to say what look like insulting phrases about Islam and its hallowed leaders and have been the supply of controversy for many years.
The Sokoto State homicide of Deborah Samuel Yakubu in 2022 serves as a stark reminder of the hazard. She was lynched by college students for her blasphemous remarks concerning the Prophet Muhammad on a WhatsApp chat group—one thing that left the nation aghast and drew international condemnation. Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a 22-year-old musician in Kano State, was in 2020 convicted and sentenced to hold for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad in a track he uploaded to WhatsApp.
Equally, in 2022, Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Affiliation of Nigeria, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment on fees of blasphemy for importing atheist views to the social media. These circumstances discuss with the humiliating destiny of these residing underneath Nigeria’s blasphemy legal guidelines, together with mob violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, and draconian judicial punishments.
These circumstances seize the necessity for Nigeria to search out an equilibrium between spiritual sensitivity and worldwide and constitutional ensures of free speech and due course of. Authorized reform, other than serving to to accumulate safety for human rights, can be wanted to discourage religiously motivated violence and extrajudicial killings.
Refusal of Kano State authorities to simply accept the judgmentIn response to the ECJ toppling quite a few the blasphemy provisions of the penal legal guidelines of the state of Kano, the Kano State Authorities flagrantly defied the judgment. In an announcement by the Commissioner for Data and Inside Affairs, Ibrahim Waiya, the federal government reaffirmed its constitutional proper to guard the ethical and spiritual sentiments of its majority Muslim inhabitants.
Waiya argued that the state legal guidelines are an expression of the spiritual sense and id of the folks of the state and therefore should essentially be preserved. In his evaluation, sustaining the choice of the Courtroom would imply to impose extraneous values that destroy indigenous custom and spiritual educating. This assertion issued by the Kano State authorities is attribute of blanket opposition within the north of Nigeria the place Sharia-law codes are written into the socio-legal code.
The denial itself is attribute of continued friction between Nigeria’s worldwide obligations and the sovereignty of the state governments in its federal system. It has the impact of elevating critical questions concerning the enforceability of the sub-regional human rights judgments and the capability and willingness of the Nigerian state to hunt compliance, particularly the place such judgments battle with deeply entrenched spiritual and cultural values on the subnational stage.
Enforceability of ECOWAS court docket choices in NigeriaThe enforceability of the ECJ judgments in Nigeria is a doctrinal and constitutional dilemma. However that Nigeria had signed the Revised ECOWAS Treaty in 1994 and joined the Protocols increasing the jurisdiction of the Courtroom to cowl human rights in 2005, Part 12(1) of the 1999 Structure (as amended) states that no treaty is able to being introduced into power of regulation in Nigeria save to the extent adopted into regulation by the Nationwide Meeting. Nevertheless, even after ratification, the ECOWAS Protocols stay un-domesticated and as such questions concerning the justiciability and enforceability in Nigeria’s home regulation of the ECJ judgments persists.
Nevertheless, the ECJ has determined in some circumstances, e.g., Moukhtar Ibrahim Aminu v Authorities of Jigawa State & 3 Ors (Go well with No. ECW/CCJ/APP/02/11) that ratification generates binding obligations underneath worldwide regulation no matter incorporation domestically. That is in accordance with Article 27 of the Vienna Conference on the Regulation of Treaties (1969) which prohibits states from invoking inside regulation as a foundation for avoiding compliance with obligations underneath a treaty.
Regardless of these pillars of regulation, enforcement stays ineffective. Based on a 2021 Report of the Open Society Justice Initiative, over 70 per cent of the Courtroom’s judgments go unenforced in ECOWAS member states, and Nigeria is among the many worst defaulters. ECOWAS lacks any supranational enforcement mechanism however depends on voluntary compliance by states—its main limitation that undermines the authority and credibility of the Courtroom in regional accountability.
Worldwide human rights implications and cultural relativismThe ECJ’s judgment holding a number of the provisions of the Kano State blasphemy legal guidelines as unconstitutional refers back to the delicate intersection of worldwide human rights commitments and home cultural and spiritual heritage. The substance of this case is the worldwide wrestle between the universality of human rights—comparable to freedom of speech underneath the ICCPR—and cultural relativism, whereby it’s assumed that rights should be interpreted inside the context of particular person cultures or religions.
In Northern Nigeria, blasphemy regulation is regarded by the bulk as essential to Islamic morals and social cohesion. The ECJ’s judgment demand that such legal guidelines be abolished or reformed by native authorities is thus considered not as a matter of regulation however as an intrusion into deeply rooted convictions and id. Such intransigence pertains to the larger political conundrum of making use of worldwide human rights requirements to sovereign states, and significantly federal states like Nigeria, whose subnational governments have important autonomy.
Whereas Nigeria is a signatory to ICCPR and ECOWAS treaty, implementation of such worldwide rulings depends largely on home political will and institutional readiness.
Kano State’s refusal to respect the Courtroom ruling is an instance on how worldwide juridical norms are weak to derailment by home politics, spiritual extremism, and nationalist rhetoric. It is usually a reason for concern how efficient regional human rights mechanisms are when their jurisdiction is challenged by home actors defending cultural sovereignty towards common rights.
Conclusion and recommendationsThe ECJ’s judgment is a basic step ahead within the effort to harmonise the Nigerian authorized framework with worldwide human rights norms. Nevertheless, a complete technique must be devised for this finish to be achieved. There exists a proactive function for the Nigerian Nationwide Meeting to undertake in domestication of the ECOWAS protocols.
Formalising the bringing into the nation’s authorized jurisdiction of the jurisdiction of the ECJ would make the enforcement of the Courtroom’s decrees straightforward, and concurrently ease state-level legislative reforms, particularly within the north.
These ought to embrace an equal re-examination of legal guidelines towards blasphemy to harmonise with worldwide human rights requirements whereas making certain that the steadiness stays equal between safeguarding spiritual emotions and enhancing freedom of expression. Public schooling is essential to this transformation. State actors and civil society should step up schooling campaigns to boost public consciousness relating to the universality of human rights and its utility in multicultural societies. ECOWAS itself should additionally take into consideration strengthening its enforcement course of, even to the purpose of making a government to ensure member nations adjust to court docket choices.
Lastly, urging ongoing discourse amongst spiritual leaders, lawmakers, and human rights activists can foster a rapport for larger understanding and bridging the hole between cultural observe and worldwide authorized norms. Mixed, these efforts might help Nigeria not solely fulfill regional obligations but additionally promote a tradition of safety of human rights throughout the federation.Chinwokwu Esq, is a authorized practitioner residing in Lagos State.
