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By 247ureports.com
A Borno State court has reportedly sentenced a Christian mother, Liyatu Samuel Dawa (also spelt Liatu), to 14 years in prison, and Christian advocacy groups say she was punished for sharing her faith with a woman who later converted. The charge named in the judgment, as reported, concerns something different, and 247ureports.com could not independently confirm either account.
The Christian Emergency Alliance said in a post on X that Dawa is behind bars and that her family is in hiding after threats, and called the sentence by Judge A.B. Kumdila a gross miscarriage of justice. TruthNigeria, which says it obtained a certified copy of the judgment, reports that she shared her faith with an adult Muslim woman who testified that she converted willingly, that Dawa pleaded for leniency, and that the judge imposed the maximum penalty of 14 years on Count 1 with no option of a fine. The same report says Count 1 was brought under Section 210 of the Borno State Penal Code, which it describes as concerning depriving a parent of the lawful custody of a child. That description does not fit a prosecution for evangelism, and none of the reports says whose child is involved or what the prosecution alleged Dawa did. Her husband, Evangelist Amos Suleman, is cited as the source of a photograph.
247ureports.com found no coverage of the case by mainstream outlets, no statement from the Borno State judiciary or government, and no copy of the judgment. The date and place of the trial, the other counts, if any, and whether an appeal has been filed are not stated in what is available. Online commentary has also pointed to the lack of comparable sentences for Muslims who convert Christians to Islam, which is a claim about patterns and not evidence about this case.
Nigerian law does not make evangelism or conversion by an adult a crime in itself, and the Constitution protects the right to change one’s religion, but Borno, like other northern states, applies a Penal Code that has offences touching on religion, and cases involving conversion have often turned on other allegations. Until the judgment or the charge sheet is published, what Dawa was convicted of and on what evidence cannot be settled, and the claim that she was jailed for evangelism rests on advocacy groups’ reading of the case.
