A Christian mother in north-eastern Nigeria has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after she shared her faith with a woman in Borno State, according to an advocacy campaign seeking her release. Campaigners name her as Liatu Samuel Dawa and say the woman she spoke with later converted to Christianity.

The sentence was imposed by Judge A.B. Kumdila, according to the same campaign statement. Ejes Gist News reports that supporters of Dawa describe the ruling as a miscarriage of justice and say her family has gone into hiding after receiving threats.

Court records, the charge sheet and any statement from the Borno State judiciary were not immediately available, and the precise legal basis of the conviction has not been independently confirmed.

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Campaigners say the prosecution followed Dawa’s discussion of her Christian faith with a woman who subsequently adopted the faith, and they characterise the offence as the ‘crime’ of evangelism.

What the campaign says about Liatu Dawa

The account of the case has circulated largely through an advocacy statement rather than through official channels. Its central claims are these:

  • Dawa, described as a Christian mother, is being held after a court sentenced her to 14 years in prison.
  • The presiding judge is named as A.B. Kumdila.
  • The prosecution is said to have arisen from her sharing of her faith with a woman in Borno State who later converted to Christianity.
  • Her family is said to have left their home after threats to their lives were made by Muslims in the area.
  • Campaigners are calling for the sentence to be overturned and for Dawa to be returned safely to her family.

The campaign uses the slogan ‘Free Liatu Dawa’ and asks supporters to press for the ruling to be reversed. It has not published a case number, the name of the court or the date of the judgment.

Borno is one of twelve northern states that extended Sharia to criminal matters from 1999 onwards, creating penal codes that include offences such as blasphemy and, in some states, apostasy. In principle those codes apply to Muslims, with non-Muslims handled by secular courts, although in practice the boundaries have been contested.

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Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution is supreme over state law. Section 38 guarantees every citizen freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change religion and to manifest that religion ‘in worship, teaching, practice and observance’, in public or in private. Nigeria has also ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, whose Article 18 protects the freedom to manifest a religion and to impart it to others.

Proselytising is not an offence under Nigerian federal law. Where prosecutions have arisen, they have generally rested on state-level blasphemy or public order provisions, and convictions have been challenged on constitutional grounds.

Why the case has drawn wider attention

Nigeria sits near the top of international rankings of countries where Christians face the most severe pressure. Open Doors, which monitors anti-Christian persecution worldwide, has repeatedly placed Nigeria among the ten most dangerous countries for Christians in its annual World Watch List, citing both Islamist insurgency in the north-east and communal and family pressure elsewhere.

Borno State has been the centre of a long-running insurgency by Boko Haram and its offshoots, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, overwhelmingly Muslim residents among them. Christians in the region are a small minority.

Several individual cases have drawn international scrutiny in recent years. In May 2022 a student, Deborah Yakubu, was beaten and burned to death in Sokoto after being accused of blasphemy in a message posted online. Rhoda Jatau, a Christian woman in Bauchi State, was held for months from 2022 after forwarding a message condemning that killing, and was later released on bail while facing a blasphemy charge.

In Kano, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu was sentenced to death by an upper Sharia court in 2020 over a blasphemy conviction, a ruling that was upheld on appeal and has remained the subject of prolonged legal proceedings.

What happens next

Under Nigerian law, a person convicted by a court may appeal against both the conviction and the sentence, and may seek bail pending the outcome. Campaigners backing Dawa have framed their demands around an appeal process rather than a specific filing.

Rights groups that track religion cases in northern Nigeria have warned that reporting on such prosecutions is often complicated by limited public access to court documents and by the reluctance of communities to speak openly about cases involving religious accusations.

The sentence against Dawa stands unless it is set aside by a higher court or altered by executive action available to state authorities. Judges in Nigeria’s Sharia and secular courts have on occasion reviewed and overturned convictions in blasphemy cases, and such reviews have usually followed sustained legal advocacy.