Abuja, Nigeria –
A student was beaten and burned to death on Thursday by fellow students in northwestern Nigeria after she was accused of blasphemous posting on social media, witnesses and police said.
Deborah Samuel was killed at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto after she was accused of “making a post on social media that blasphemed … the Prophet Muhammad”, according to a police statement. Two students were arrested in connection with the incident.
Authorities also closed the school indefinitely in a bid to calm nerves in this part of Nigeria, where residents in the past have reacted violently to actions or comments considered anti-Islamic.
Samuel’s murder has caused outrage and shock among many Nigerians on social media.
The incident highlighted deep religious tensions in Africa’s most populous country, which is almost evenly divided between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north. In April, an atheist was sentenced to 24 years in prison for posting on social media what a court in the northern state of Kano described as blasphemy against Islam.
Witnesses said Samuel, a second-year student whose age was not made public, was immediately attacked by her classmates after criticizing a post about religion in the WhatsApp student group.
“She was angry at the way Muslims spoke about Islamic issues in this WhatsApp group, which led her to make some non-Islamic statements against the Prophet Muhammad,” said Basharu Guyawa Isa, a resident and human rights activist in Sokoto.
School authorities quickly deployed security guards to protect Samuel, but they were overrun by angry youths.
“Students forcibly removed the victim from the security room where she was hidden by school authorities, killed her and burned the building,” said Sokoto police spokesman Sanusi Abubakar.
A video of the incident, posted on social media and confirmed by the Associated Press, shows Samuel lying on the ground while being stoned and beaten with boards. The young men around her poured tires on her and set them on fire.
Abubakar said two students had been arrested in connection with the incident while an investigation led by Soko Governor Aminu Tambuval was under way.
“The suspects in the virus video on Twitter have been spotted and will soon be (identified),” he said.
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