By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 25 2002 (IPS)

Nigerian woman, Safiya Hussaini, who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery by an Islamic court in Sokoto, north-western Nigeria, has regained her freedom following pressures from both local and international organisations to spare her life.

The Sharia Appeal Court on Monday set the 34-year-old mother of five free as the court overruled the lower court on procedural grounds. Safiya had been convicted under Islamic Sharia (laws) that did not exist when the alleged offence was committed.

Sokoto Islamic judge, Alhaji Bello Silame, presided over the judgement, whose two-hour verdict was read out by Mohammed Tambari, who was part of a three-man panel.

Tambari said the lower court should have advised Safiya that she had the chance to defend herself by appealing against the original judgement. “The court in Gwadabawa did not do this and therefore, its final judgement was faulty,” said Tambari.

Sharia was introduced in Sokoto State in October 2000, while Safiya was charged for adultery on Dec 23, 2001. “The alleged offence was committed before the implementation of the Sharia legal code,” read Tambari

Excited lawyers whisked Safiya off immediately after the judgement. Said Abdulkadir Imam, Safiya’s leading lawyer: “I am happy that she has been freed by the court.”

“All the procedure of the original court was wrong,” Tamberi added.

Rights groups also have commended the judgement.

“We welcome the judgement. It is a welcome development. We need to express our appreciation to the international community, to amnesty international and to human rights organisations in Nigeria for mounting the pressure that has made this judgement possible,” says Segun Jegede of the Lagos-based Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR).

“We may also say the welcome relief is being short-lived following another judgement in (nearby) Katsina State that another woman should die by stoning. It is one death sentence too many. We now wonder where do we go from here? How long will we burn up energy on the issue of debating Sharia sentences? People are hungry in this country and we waste energy on Sharia problems. This is unnecessary digression,” he told IPS on Monday.

Jegede called on the government to persuade the northern states, which have introduced Sharia, to use Nigeria’s secular constitution when handing down sentences. “There should not be two separate constitutions in the country,” he argued.

Clement Nwankwo, Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) agrees.

“The Federal government needs to intervene judicially to get the Supreme Court to make pronouncements instead of mere letter to the states applying Sharia. I have no doubt that the Supreme Court will take sides with those who argue that the law offends human sensibility,” Nwakwo said.

The sharia, he said, should not be practised in Nigeria, which is split 50/50 between Christians and Muslims. “We must continue to wage war against the law until it is abolished. Sharia will continue to be controversial as long as it targets women and as long as it targets non-Muslims”, he said.

“For adultery to occur,” Nwakwo argues, “there must be two people involved, but only the woman (Safiya) has been brought before the sharia court for punishment”.

The Gwadabawa Sharia Court sentenced Safiya to death by stoning for adultery in December, a judgement, which sparked international outrage with the European Union, warning Nigeria to respect human dignity especially where it concerns women.

The London-based human rights watchdog, Amnesty International collected the signatures of more than 600,000 persons opposed to stoning to death.

Olubunmi Okogie, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos at the weekend quoted sections of the Islamic holy book, the Koran which stipulates punishment by lashes for adultery.

In a statement, made available to IPS in Lagos, Okogie noted that the Koran “only sanctions punishment of so many lashes for such an offence not stoning”, and that “the law of stoning was introduced later by Omar, the Calif for reasons best known to him”.

Okogie argued that the late Sudanese clergyman, Mahmud Mohammed Taha, who was executed for apostasy in 1985, made a clear distinction between Sharia and Islam. “Sharia is not part of Islamic religion but deals solely with customs and traditions of a particular people living at the time and in the land of a particular nation and that is not transferable.

“I read with utter disgust the insistence of the state counsel of the stoning of Safiya Hussaini despite appeals from both the international community and human rights organisations to temper justice with mercy,” he said in the statement.

“Safiya must not be stoned to death; laws are made for man, not man for law. What will anyone gain from shedding human blood?” Okogie wondered.

The government, which had hitherto kept mute over the Sharia, broke its silence last week.

Fearing sanctions by the international community over Safiya’s case, the minister of Justice and Attorney General, Kanu Agabi wrote to the 12 northern states applying the strict Islamic Sharia to modify such harsh punishments as amputation and stoning to death.

Excerpt: