The Supreme Court of Nigeria on Friday (March 7) upheld the death sentence for a Christian who defended himself against an attack by Fulani herdsmen.
Calling the ruling a “horrendous miscarriage of justice,” attorney and international human rights advocate Emmanuel Ogebe said in a press statement that the original trial judge substituted her opinion in place of facts in the 2021 death sentence handed to Sunday Jackson, who at that time had been imprisoned for seveal years after herdsmen attacked his farm in Adamawa state.
“The judge had confused the facts of the case resulting in a horrendous miscarriage of justice, and as such it must be voided,” the U.S.-based Ogebe said. “From Appellant’s brief of argument, it is patently clear that his constitutional right and protection of self-defense was unjustly and injudiciously denied him by the trial judge.”
Justice Fatima Ahmed Tafida, a Muslim, sentenced Jackson to death on Feb. 10, 2021. Religious freedom advocates fear the upholding of the death sentence will result in Jackson being killed in prison and called for a state pardon and clemency.
In the Fulani herdsmen attack on Jackson’s farm, one of the assailants stabbed him with a knife, which the Christian managed to seize and admittedly used to kill him, Ogebe said.
“Despite injuries he sustained, Jackson overpowered his attacker, wresting the weapon from him and stabbed him as well, following which his attacker died,” Ogebe said.
The trial judge misinterpreted the Nigerian constitution to mean Jackson had the option of fleeing rather than fighting, though the constitution clearly empowers citizens to defend themselves, he said.
“Indeed the trial judge contorted and distorted logic on its head by saying plaintiff should have run away while having admitted into evidence that he was stabbed in the leg and thus momentarily handicapped,” Ogebe said.
The discrepancy between the judge’s reasoning and the facts came atop the failure of the conviction and sentence to be delivered within the constitutionally mandated 90 days from the end of trial; the verdict came after 167 days, adding to the “grievous miscarriage of justice,” he said.
“This is a sad day for Nigerians, as their ability to protect themselves from violent attackers has been further diminished,” Ogebe said.
Also contributing to the “textbook case of miscarriage of justice” was that Jackson awaited trial for several years for just five days in court, he said.
“Instead of a five-day trial, he spent six years in custody in a non-controversial trial in which he did not deny that the death of the deceased occurred as a result of an altercation,” Ogebe said. “Having spent all this time, Mr. Jackson was further subjected to 167 days of agonizing wait for judgment as to whether he should be freed or hanged in violation of constitutional protections against such protracted delays.”
Jackson had been charged under Section 211 of the Adamawa State Penal Code for intentionally killing the Fulani assailant, identified as Ardo Bawuro.
Leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) expressed concern that the country’s highest court could accept a ruling rife with glaring evidence of discrimination against a Christian who will be hanged to death after being attacked by an armed herdsman without provocation and in self-defense.
CAN Chairman John Joseph Hayab and Bishop Mohammed Naga, the association’s secretary general for northern Nigeria, said it was painful that both Appeal and Supreme Courts upheld the sentence of death by hanging. They also cited the trial judge misinterpreting Section 23 of the Adamawa State Penal Code Laws to mean that Jackson should have fled and not fought in self-defense.
“It is a distortion of logic to suggest that the defendant should have run away, despite admitting into evidence that he was stabbed in the leg and thus momentarily handicapped,” they said in a press statement.
The CAN leaders appealed to Adamawa Gov. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri to “kindly exercise his constitutional duties and ‘prerogative of mercy,’ and in the spirit of peace building and reconciliation – which both the state and the nation now desperately need – to please pardon Sunday Jackson.”
“Mr. Sunday Jackson has truly been subjected to the excruciating pain of waiting for death in the midst of the shadow of death by the grave travesty of the misinterpretation of Section 23 of the Adamawa State Penal Code Laws and the unnecessarily prolonged trial that lasted six and a half years, which ordinarily should not have lasted such a lengthy period,” they said.
Nigeria ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List list of the 50 worst countries for Christians, remaining among the most dangerous places on earth for them. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.
“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.
