Caning for premarital sex to go on

The sentence of 180 strokes of the cane passed on a 17-year-old girl for premarital sex under Islamic law in Nigeria’s northern Zamfara State will be carried out despite objections raised by the central government, the French news agency reported on Wednesday.

AFP reported Zamfara Governor Ahmed Sani as denying his government was under pressure to suspend the sentence on Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, insisting that the law would take its course.
“Even if the federal government issues an instruction,” he said, “we would go ahead and carry out the punishment.”
Canada had last week protested to the Nigerian government over the sentence on the girl, who gave birth last week and was due to be punished 40 days later, saying it violated fundamental human rights.

This prompted a reported government directive to the Zamfara authorities to suspend the sentence.
Governor Sani set the pace in Nigeria with the introduction of Islamic Sharia in December 1999. Since then eight other states in the mainly Muslim northern Nigeria have followed suit or indicated their intention to do so.

In Kano State, which began operating under Sharia laws in December, a crowd gathered at an Islamic court on Wednesday to watch two men receive 80 lashes of the cane each, on their bare backs, after being convicted of consuming alcohol.

The application of Sharia is opposed by the northern Christian minorities and people in predominantly non-Muslim south of Africa’s most populous country of more than 110 million people.