It’s a movement in the right direction, but what the government of Nigeria is doing to Mubarak Bala is still just plain wrong.
In April 2021, Bala was sentenced to 24 years in prison as a punishment for the blasphemy of saying that death is real. Bala wrote on Facebook that “you have no life after this one. You have been dead before, long before you were born, billions of years of death.“
Mubarak Bala’s denial of a magical invisible land where dead people are brought back to life through the power of wishful thinking was characterized by a Nigerian court as “provocative and annoying”.
In Nigeria, to be provocative and annoying is a crime, at least when the people you annoy are religious. Religious institutions in Nigeria have the right to demand the prosecution of people simply for saying that they don’t agree with a religion’s claims about supernatural creatures and spirit powers.
There’s a little bit of good news in the case. Mubarak Bala has been sitting in prison for years now. This week, a court declared that this sentence was “excessive” and reduced the prison term from 24 years to 5 years.
A 5 year prison sentence for saying on Facebook that you don’t agree with religious teachings is still harsh and excessive.
What’s more, the government has the ability to appeal the reduction in Bala’s prison sentence.
Mubarak Bala is not free and clear yet.