Our Reporter
A human rights activist and head of Poland’s Auschwitz Memorial has written to President Muhammadu Buhari, offering to serve part of a 10-year jail term handed to 13-year-old boy, Omar Farouq, for blasphemy.
Piotr Cywinski requested a pardon for Farouq, who was accused of making blasphemous statements during an argument and was consequently sentenced by a Sharia Court in Kano State last month.
Cywinski said that if a pardon was not possible, he and 119 other volunteers would take on the boy’s punishment so that each of them would spend one month in a Nigerian jail.
In the letter to President Muhammadu Buhari posted on the Memorial’s Twitter account, Cywinski said as the director of a memorial to a place “where children were imprisoned and murdered, I cannot remain indifferent to this disgraceful sentence for humanity.”
Although the sentence has been widely condemned by rights groups, the Presidency is yet to comment on it.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said last month that the sentence was “wrong” and against the international accords that Nigeria had signed.
A special adviser to Kano State governor was reported as saying that he had seen the letter on social media.
“The position of Kano State Government remains the decision of the Sharia Court,” Salihu Tanko Yakasai told Reuters.
A spokesman for the Kano State Judiciary, Baba Jibo Ibrahim, was quoted as saying that he had not seen the letter but added that the President had the power to pardon Farouq.
