Four days after Deborah Emmanuel was stoned to death at the entrance to Shehu Shegari Teachers College on May 12, 2022, Sokoto police announced that they had apprehended and brought two suspects to court in connection with the slaying.
Bilyaminu Aliyu and Aminu Hukunci were presented before a local magistrates court in Sokoto, were charged with incitement and public disturbance, and were later charged with murder.
Court papers reviewed by Sahara Reporters show that the accused killers were released at the end of January.
“Assuming the court documents quoted by media reports are correct, the murder charges against two suspects were struck out for lack of diligent prosecution,” Barrister Yakubu Bawa, head of the bar association in Jos, told The Epoch Times.
The court hearings began in October 2022 and concluded in January after prosecutors failed to appear in court for five consecutive hearings.
“From the manner in which the charges were struck out, we conclude that the prosecutors never intended to prosecute the matter,” Bawa said by telephone.
“This is a bad omen for Nigeria’s Ministry of Justice. It implies that the life of a Christian doesn’t matter, and it may portend that Nigerian Christians are now an endangered species.
“More concerning still is that people are afraid to discuss this miscarriage of justice.”
News of the high-profile murder case being dropped by Nigerian officials surfaces as media reports document mass killings of Christians by Muslims in the Middle Belt states of Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna, and Benue since early April.
“The government is complicit in the egregious and ongoing religious cleansing,” Nina Shea, a legal scholar specializing in international persecution at the Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times.
Father Still Grieving
Garba Emmanuel still grieves for his 21-year-old daughter.“It still hurts one year later,” he told The Epoch Times by telephone.
For the week after the slaying, Sokoto was embroiled in anti-Christian riots while Nigeria’s 100 million Christians recoiled in horror.
A mega-church minister intervened to immediately move the Emmanuel family 720 miles to Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers state, to keep them safe.
“It is still very saddening to me and my family,” Garba Emmanuel texted to The Epoch Times.
“It is one year since my brilliant and hardworking daughter was killed and burnt by so-called jihadists. The pains won’t go away no matter how hard we try.”
Protests started on May 11, 2022, in Deborah Emmanuel’s dormitory after she shared a voice message in a class WhatsApp group warning her classmates about the inappropriate use of the group for religious posts, according to multiple sources at Shehu Shegari College.
In the widely circulated voice message at about the time of her murder, an evidently frightened Deborah Emmanuel can be heard saying, “Holy Ghost fire! Nothing will happen,” emphasizing that the group was intended solely for sharing notifications about class activities.
She also used the phrase “useless prophets,” which some students interpreted as an insult against the prophet Mohammed.
Deborah Emmanuel was violently assaulted along with her best friend in the dormitory before some Muslim friends came to her rescue and hid her until the next morning, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to The Epoch Times.
She was eventually dragged out of the dormitory and beaten by a mob early on May 12.
An unarmed college security officer locked Deborah Emmanuel and her cousin, Josephine, in a gatehouse at the campus exit for their own safety.
Up to 200 fellow students and nonstudents besieged the gatehouse for nearly three hours, attempting to set it on fire and savagely beating the security guard who bravely stood in front of the door, according to Deborah Emmanuel’s uncle, an eyewitness who spoke on background to The Epoch Times.
After some hours, the guard, who was badly injured, left the front door of the building.
About 50 police officers in uniform and six officers from the Department of State Security stood by without intervening as the mob bludgeoned the two women for several minutes.
Emmanuel said he last heard from his daughter on May 12 at 9 a.m. local time when she called him for help, saying a group of Muslims was attempting to kill her.
At the time, the father of seven was 179 miles away in Nigeria’s Kebbi state, where he lived with his family. When he finally arrived at the scene four hours later, only her charred body remained on the ground where she had been burned.
Shockwaves Around Globe
Deborah Emmanuel’s death sent shockwaves throughout Nigeria and sparked international condemnation.The U.S. government even honored her memory by posting her picture on the website of the U.S. Office of Religious Freedom to mark the fourth U.S. International Day Commemorating the Victims of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on Aug. 22.
Yet a year after the lynching, human rights watchdogs are left stunned and saddened by the news that Deborah Emmanuel’s killers were let go.
“Nigeria is sliding down the slope of intolerance and bigotry as one religion is seen and promoted as more superior to others,” Kyle Abts, president of the International Committee on Nigeria, told The Epoch Times in a text message.
“Deborah Emmanuel’s brutal murder was cause for concern in a supposed democratic country that espouses freedom of religion.
“Yet, when an innocent female student is harassed and murdered for being a Christian amid the Sokoto Caliphate, it’s as if it were a stain on Nigeria and Sunni Islam.
“Witnesses who saw exactly which male students carried out the heinous act of stoning Deborah to death and setting her body on fire apparently were threatened and silenced.”
