By Lazarus Chinwokwu
On April 9, 2025, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice (ECJ) made a landmark judgment, holding certain aspects of the Kano State’s blasphemy laws in Nigeria to be incompatible with international human rights standards, more particularly, the right to freedom of expression. The decision has caused great controversy over balancing international human rights obligations and national laws, particularly in places like northern Nigeria where religion and cultural values are supreme.
Overview of the ECOWAS Court Judgment
In a landmark judgment, the ECJ held that certain provisions of Kano State criminal law were incompatible with Nigeria’s international human rights obligations. Specifically, the Court invalidated Section 210 of the Kano State Penal Code and Section 382(b) of the Kano State Sharia Penal Code Law (2000), which both made it a crime to do certain things that are understood to amount to blasphemy, for instance, insulting religious figures like the Prophet Muhammad. The Court held that the said provisions are badly drafted, too general, and too repressive, particularly as they invoke excessive punishment in the guise of the death penalty.
Based on Nigeria’s international obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Court’s argument was based on the doctrines of necessity, proportionality, and rule of law in criminal law. In its ruling, it held that the law had failed these fundamental tests and thus violated the right to fair trial as well as freedom of expression. Kano State was thus ordered to repeal or amend the offending legislation in line with international legal expectations.
Placing Blasphemy Laws in Context in Nigeria
Nigerian blasphemy laws are most robust in Nigeria’s 12 northern states where the Sharia legal system coexists with the common law and customary law. They make it a crime to say what appear to be insulting words about Islam and its hallowed leaders and have been the source of controversy for decades. The Sokoto State murder of Deborah Samuel Yakubu in 2022 serves as a stark reminder of the danger. She was lynched by students for her blasphemous remarks about the Prophet Muhammad on a WhatsApp chat group—something that left the nation aghast and drew global condemnation.
Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a 22-year-old musician in Kano State, was in 2020 convicted and sentenced to hang for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad in a song he uploaded to WhatsApp. Similarly, in 2022, Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment on charges of blasphemy for uploading atheist views to the social media. These cases refer to the humiliating fate of those living under Nigeria’s blasphemy laws, including mob violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, and draconian judicial punishments. These cases capture the need for Nigeria to find equilibrium between religious sensitivity and international and constitutional guarantees of free speech and due process. Legal reform, apart from helping to acquire protection for human rights, is also needed to deter religiously motivated violence and extrajudicial killings.
Refusal of Kano State Government to Accept the Judgment
In response to the ECJ toppling a number of the blasphemy provisions of the penal laws of the state of Kano, the Kano State Government flagrantly defied the judgment. In a statement by the Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs, Ibrahim Waiya, the government reaffirmed its constitutional right to protect the moral and religious sentiments of its majority Muslim population. Waiya argued that the state laws are an expression of the religious sense and identity of the people of the state and hence must necessarily be preserved.
In his analysis, maintaining the decision of the Court would mean to impose extraneous values that destroy indigenous tradition and religious teaching. This statement issued by the Kano State Government is characteristic of blanket opposition in the north of Nigeria where Sharia law codes are written into the socio-legal code. The denial itself is characteristic of continued friction between Nigeria’s international obligations and the sovereignty of the state governments in its federal system. It has the effect of raising serious questions about the enforceability of the sub-regional human rights judgments and the capacity and willingness of the Nigerian state to seek compliance, especially where such judgments conflict with deeply entrenched religious and cultural values at the subnational level.
Enforceability of ECOWAS Court Decisions in Nigeria
The enforceability of the ECJ judgments in Nigeria is a doctrinal and constitutional dilemma. Notwithstanding that Nigeria had signed the Revised ECOWAS Treaty in 1994 and joined the Protocols expanding the jurisdiction of the Court to cover human rights in 2005, Section 12(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) states that no treaty is capable of being brought into force of law in Nigeria save to the extent adopted into law by the National Assembly. However, even after ratification, the ECOWAS Protocols remain un-domesticated and as such questions about the justiciability and enforceability in Nigeria’s domestic law of the ECJ judgments persists.
However, the ECJ has decided in some cases, e.g., Moukhtar Ibrahim Aminu v Government of Jigawa State & 3 Ors(Suit No. ECW/CCJ/APP/02/11) that ratification generates binding obligations under international law irrespective of incorporation domestically. This is in accordance with Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) which prohibits states from invoking internal law as a basis for avoiding compliance with obligations under a treaty.
Despite these pillars of law, enforcement remains ineffective. According to a 2021 Report of the Open Society Justice Initiative, over 70% of the Court’s judgments go unenforced in ECOWAS member-states, and Nigeria is among the worst defaulters. ECOWAS lacks any supranational enforcement mechanism but relies on voluntary compliance by states—its primary limitation that undermines the authority and credibility of the Court in regional accountability.
International Human Rights Implications and Cultural Relativism
The ECJ’s judgment holding some of the provisions of the Kano State blasphemy laws as unconstitutional refers to the sensitive intersection of international human rights commitments and domestic cultural and religious heritage. The substance of this case is the international struggle between the universality of human rights—such as freedom of speech under the ICCPR—and cultural relativism, whereby it is assumed that rights must be interpreted within the context of individual cultures or religions.
In Northern Nigeria, blasphemy law is regarded by the majority as necessary to Islamic morals and social cohesion. The ECJ’s judgment demand that such laws be abolished or reformed by local authorities is thus viewed not as a matter of law but as an intrusion into deeply rooted convictions and identity. Such intransigence relates to the greater political conundrum of applying international human rights standards to sovereign states, and particularly federal states like Nigeria, whose subnational governments have significant autonomy.
While Nigeria is a signatory to ICCPR and ECOWAS treaty, implementation of such international rulings is dependent largely on domestic political will and institutional readiness. Kano State’s refusal to respect the Court ruling is an example on how international juridical norms are vulnerable to derailment by domestic politics, religious extremism, and nationalist rhetoric. It is also a cause of concern how effective regional human rights mechanisms are when their jurisdiction is challenged by domestic actors defending cultural sovereignty against universal rights.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The ECJ’s judgment is a fundamental step forward in the effort to harmonize the Nigerian legal framework with international human rights norms. However, a comprehensive strategy would have to be devised for this end to be achieved. There exists a proactive role for the Nigerian National Assembly to undertake in domestication of the ECOWAS protocols. Formalizing the bringing into the nation’s legal jurisdiction of the jurisdiction of the ECJ would make the enforcement of the Court’s decrees easy, and simultaneously ease state-level legislative reforms, especially in the north. These should include an equal re-examination of laws against blasphemy to harmonize with international human rights standards while ensuring that the balance remains equal between safeguarding religious feelings and enhancing freedom of expression.
Public education is key to this transformation. State actors and civil society must step up education campaigns to raise public awareness regarding the universality of human rights and its application in multicultural societies. ECOWAS itself must also think about strengthening its enforcement process, even to the point of creating a central authority to guarantee member-nations comply with court decisions. Finally, urging ongoing discourse among religious leaders, lawmakers, and human rights activists can foster a rapport for greater understanding and bridging the gap between cultural practice and international legal norms. Combined, these efforts can help Nigeria not only fulfill regional obligations but also promote a culture of protection of human rights across the federation.
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