Sharia judge flogged for boozing


Sharia punishments include amputations

A Sharia court judge in northern Nigeria has been flogged in public
after being found guilty of drinking alcohol.
Mohammadu Na'ila, received 80 strokes of the cane on Friday in front
of an estimated crowd of 5,000 people in the town of Kaura Namoda in
north-eastern Zamfara state.

He is the first Islamic court official to be punished in public,
since a swathe of northern Nigerian states introduced full Islamic
law in the past two years.

The relatively light punishment was handed down by his brother-in-
law, also a judge, who said that he was inclined to leniency because
he is elderly.

The BBC's Ibrahim Dossara in Zamfara said there was cheering and
laughter among the crowd as the sentence was carried out.

Judge Na'ila is suspended from office and is expected to be
dismissed.

Caught out

The case has also led to calls for all Sharia judges to be screened
to rid the courts of a few bad apples, but Zamfara's authorities have
rejected this.

Zamfara, became the first state to re-introduce Islamic law in
Northern Nigeria two years ago.

The Islamic code bans alcohol, and regulates the social conduct of
men and women in public.

Our correspondent said that the elderly judge was taken by a group of
activists, known as the Sharia Implementation Committee, to a police
station after he was found behaving in a lively manner, with alcohol
on his breath.

The governor of Zamfara, Ahmad Sani, said the conviction of a Sharia
court judge was a clear indication that "the legal system is not
discriminatory" and proved that "Sharia is not only for the common
man, but for all irrespective of their positions in society."

Nigeria's sizeable Christian population opposes the implementation of
Sharia, and tensions in the north has spilt over into violence
between Muslims and Christians.

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