Washington, DC — Freedom Now welcomes the release of humanist leader Mubarak Bala from prison after nearly five years of wrongful detention. Bala was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison on blasphemy charges before an appeal court reduced his sentence to five years in May 2024.
“We are grateful that Mubarak Bala has been released and reunited with his family,” said Freedom Now Program Director Karl Horberg. “However, Bala continues to express concerns about his ongoing safety. We call on Nigeria to ensure Bala’s safety and allow him to continue his work without further harassment.”
The son of an Islamic scholar and a chemical engineer by training, Bala began exploring religion in his youth and spoke openly about leaving Islam. He began advocating for freedom of religion or belief and was particularly outspoken about the restrictive environment in his home state of Kano, which employs Sharia law. He also campaigned against blasphemy laws, educated others about human rights, and spoke out on the dangers of religious extremism. As Bala became one of the country’s most prominent critics of harmful religious practices, he began receiving death threats. In 2014, his father and uncles conspired to drug, beat, and forcibly commit him to a psychiatric ward, claiming that his atheism was a sign of a personality disorder.
Bala was released after a two-week stay, only to face continued threats to his safety and accusations of ‘apostasy’ for his decision to break from Islam, even though states using Sharia law in Nigeria do not label it as an offense in their penal codes. After a period in hiding, Bala decided to stay in Nigeria, moving to the secular Kaduna State. He became president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, advocating for freedom of religion or belief and humanist values.
In April 2020, Bala was arrested by plainclothes officers in Kaduna over Facebook comments that some alleged had insulted the prophet Muhammad. He was transferred back to Kano.
The case against Bala was riddled with procedural irregularities from the very beginning. He was held without charge for more than a year and denied access to medical care and to his legal team, during a time when Nigeria’s constitutional promise of freedom of religion or belief was severely undermined. The Federal High Court in Abuja ruled Bala’s arrest unconstitutional in December 2020 and ordered authorities to release him on bail, but that order was ignored. When Bala’s trial finally concluded in April 2022, he received a severe and disproportionate 24-year prison sentence from the Kano State High Court, which ignored his pleas for leniency. In May 2024, an appeals court reduced Bala’s sentence to five years.
In July 2024, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released an opinion finding that the government of Nigeria violated international law by detaining Bala. Responding to a petition filed by Humanists International, Freedom Now, Freedom House, and the international law firm Dechert LLP, the UN concluded that Bala was wrongfully imprisoned for exercising his right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief and that because of this violation no trial should have taken place.
Nigeria is rated Partly Free in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2024 report with a democracy score of 44/100. The country has a score of 20/40 for political rights and 24/60 for civil liberties.
According to Humanists International’s Freedom of Thought report, “Nonreligious people face social persecution and prohibitive social taboos in Nigeria.” Humanists and other nonreligious individuals face regular harassment and persecution and are often painted as “immoral”; many face threats of violence and are forced to conceal their true beliefs and identity to ensure their own security. The nonreligious are often completely overlooked for inclusion in dialogues on freedom of religion or belief and tolerance.