Nigeria: Adultery Death Sentences Will Be Stopped
Reacting to negative attention it has received on the subject ahead of the Miss World pageant, the Nigerian government this month reiterated that it will not allow death sentences to be carried out against woman convicted of adultery.
Twelve states in Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated North have adopted Islamic sharia law which calls for death by stoning for individuals convicted of adultery or rape. Several women have been sentenced to be stoned to death under the law, though none of these sentences has been carried out yet.
Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dubem Onyia said that Nigeria would use “its constitutional powers to thwart any negative ruling, which is deemed injurious to its people.”
Nigerian officials have said before that they the death by stoning sentences are unconstitutional, but they have also soft-pedaled their statements somewhat as they look ahead to nationwide elections in 2003.
Left unanswered was how northern Muslims will view the national government’s increasingly firm anti-sharia stance. Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo is a southern Christian, and violence between Muslims, Christians and animists has claimed more than 8,000 lives since Obasanjo’s 1999 election.
Source:
Nigeria vows to block stoning deaths. Glenn McKenzie, Associated Press, November 10, 2002.
The Nigeria: Adultery Death Sentences Will Be Stopped by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: Nigeria
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