By Abigail Hofland | May 8, 2025

Nigeria (MNN) — An ECOWAS court of twelve nations has ruled that Nigeria’s Kano State must repeal its locally enforced blasphemy laws. Kano officials have responded with pushback, citing the interest of their Muslim citizens. Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations says outsider perspective is unlikely to affect local jurisdiction in Nigeria’s Muslim north. 

“When you have a Muslim dominated area like Northern Nigeria, the imams and the Spiritual leaders run the day,” he says. “They are the biggest influencers in the entire community.”

Politicians are afraid to stand against their edict, in part because doing so means loss of political support as a baseline outcome. More Christians live in Nigeria than in any other country in Africa, but they are concentrated in the South. 

“It’s very much a tale of two stories: a Muslim North that’s dominant and a Christian South that is equally dominant,” Kelley says. 

Kano State is among several other Northern Muslim states abiding by Sharia law, which calls for drastic responses to those who fall afoul of blasphemy laws.

“It’s hard to understand the intensity,” Kelley says. “We’re talking about an area – that Kano is included in – where more Christians are killed for their faith in Jesus than the rest of the world combined.” 

He says the few Christians in Northern Nigeria are crying out to the International community for aid. 

“Unfortunately, until these radicals in the North are reigned in, these acts of terror are just going to continue,” he says. 

But the ultimate answer to Nigeria’s northern troubles is not political or diplomatic. Kelley sees the church in Nigeria’s South as a key to all of this. He is calling for directional prayers regarding this matter: that the church in the South would be bold and courageous to engage in this situation more actively. 

“Because largely in the South, the two dominant Christian groups have wiped their hands of issues in the North,” he says. 

Please pray that the church in Nigeria’s South would take on a missional mindset toward its northern neighbors, rather than an oppositional perspective that writes off those in Islam’s grip. 

“The gospel is the only thing that is going to change Northern Nigeria,” Kelley says. And faithful believers carrying the good news is the way it’s going to get there. 

Images used in this article courtesy of Kazys Photography via Pexels.

Original Article Posted Here: https://www.mnnonline.org/news/local-repeal-of-blasphemy-laws-unlikely-in-nigerias-kano-state/