When Even a Preacher Isn’t Safe: Nigeria’s Blasphemy Law Trap | Column

Opinion.

Nigeria’s blasphemy law has just proved something its critics have argued for years: it protects no one, not even the faithful. In mid-September 2026, ten religious organisations sued Kano State’s governor, police commissioner and attorney general, demanding they prosecute a local Islamic preacher, Malam Abubakar Lawan Triumph, over sermons and social media posts the groups call blasphemous. He had already been suspended by Kano’s Shura Council and had publicly apologised. That was not enough. The plaintiffs want criminal charges under the Kano State Sharia Penal Code and the 2024 Cybercrimes Act, and are pressing the courts to force prosecutors into action.

Nigeria’s blasphemy law spares no one

Sit with that for a moment. Triumph is not an atheist. He is not an apostate. He is a working preacher who reconciled with his accusers, and it changed nothing. If contrition cannot save an insider, what chance does an outsider have? This is the honest lesson of Nigeria’s blasphemy law: it is not really about defending belief. It is a weapon that can be pointed at anyone who speaks carelessly, and it is pointed hardest at those with the least power to fight back.

That is precisely why ex-Muslims and secularists in Nigeria live under such constant threat. If a Sharia court, a mob or a rival faction can turn scripture into a truncheon against a devout Muslim, imagine what awaits someone who has left the faith outright. The machinery does not distinguish between heresy and honesty. It only asks whether someone has been offended, and offence is infinitely renewable.

Nigeria’s federal constitution guarantees freedom of religion and conscience. Kano’s Sharia Penal Code, in practice, guarantees neither. Civil society groups keep suing to force prosecutions, state governments keep suspending clerics rather than defending them, and ordinary Nigerians keep learning the same lesson: silence is safer than speech.

Free thought advocates cannot treat this as a niche Islamic squabble. It is a preview. Blasphemy law is a single lever that can be pulled against a preacher today and an apostate tomorrow, and often is, in the same courtroom, under the same statute.

Nigeria should scrap Kano’s Sharia Penal Code blasphemy provisions entirely, not tinker with who gets charged under them. Until then, no Nigerian, believer or not, preacher or apostate, can speak freely without checking over their shoulder first.

Fact-basis: Reporting from Daily Trust and allAfrica.com (17-18 September 2026) on the lawsuit by ten religious organisations against Kano State officials over cleric Malam Abubakar Lawan Triumph’s alleged blasphemy.