A student in northwestern Nigeria was beaten and burnt to death on Thursday, 12 May, by other students after she was blamed for making a blasphemous comment on social media.
The girl named Deborah Samuel was killed in the Shehu Shagari College of Education in the state of Sokoto after she was accused of “making a post on social media that blasphemed Prophet Muhammad,” as per a police statement. Two students have been captured in regard to the incident. The School has been shut down over the crisis to calm the situation in that part of Nigeria where citizens have in the past violently responded to comments or actions considered anti-Islamic.
The killing of Samuel has caused anger and shock among the residents of Nigeria, and they are showing their rage on social media.
Her offence was that she sent a voice note in her class group chat in which she reacted against posting religious content in their study group chat on WhatsApp.
After seeing the group coming toward her, the female student was forcefully removed from the security post where she hid. She was forcefully dragged out, beaten and burnt to death by Islamic Jihadist students.
This incident emphasises the serious religious tension in the most popular country in Africa, which is almost equally divided between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north. An atheist was sentenced to 24 years of imprisonment in April over a social media post that a northern Kano state court deemed blasphemous against Islam.
Witnesses said that the girl, whose age has not been revealed, a second-year college student, was immediately criticised by her fellow classmates after she criticised a religion-based post on the students’ Whatsapp group.
Basharu Guyawa Isa, who is a resident and human rights activist in Sokoto, said, “She was angry about how Muslims were talking about Islamic affairs in that WhatsApp group, which made her make some un-Islamic utterances against Prophet Mohammed.”
The school authority instantly deployed security personnel to safeguard Samuel, but angry youths overpowered her.
“Students forcefully pulled the victim from the security room where the school authorities hid her, and they killed her and burnt the building,” said Sokoto police spokesperson Sanusi Abubakar.
Abubakar said two students had been captured in relation to this incident, and Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal has directed a probe.
