Mubarak Bala

Mubarak Bala (born 1984 ) is a Nigerian atheist and president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. Bala has faced persecution and arrest for leaving Islam and publicly expressing atheist views.

On 5 April 2022, the Kano State High Court sentenced Bala to 24 years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to an eighteen-count charge of blasphemy and public incitement. In 2024, he was released after four years of imprisonment, and he relocated to Germany.

Early life and loss of faith Bala was born in Kano, northern Nigeria, in 1984. In a 2016 article on his "personal journey", he stated that he lost his faith "little by little" as he grew and met people outside of his conservative and religious hometown. His criticism became more vocal as terror attacks increased in Nigeria. The International Humanist and Ethical Union has taken up the case and believes Bala's human rights were violated. According to the IHEU, "The real reason for this outrageous and inhumane action is because Mubarak has renounced Islam and has openly declared himself to be an atheist." On 4 July 2014, the BBC reported that Bala had been released from hospital in conjunction with a doctors' strike and was seeking reconciliation with his family. It was not clear if he would remain in Nigeria, due to death threats.

Arrest and conviction

Bala decided to stay in Nigeria and was named president of the Nigerian Humanists. In April 2020, he was arrested in Kaduna for blasphemy, due to a Facebook post he made, and was subsequently held without charge. Fears mounted for his safety due to the fact that the Nigerian police allegedly transferred him from the state of Kaduna to Kano, where Sharia law is practiced, and in the face of several credible death threats. According to his lawyer, while in prison, Bala was "denied access to healthcare, kept in solitary confinement, and forced to worship the Islamic way". Jamie Raskin has advocated for his release as part of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission's Defending Freedoms project, and a petition was filed at the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on his behalf.

On 5 April 2022, Mubarak was sentenced to 24 years in prison at a (secular) high court in the northern state of Kano, after pleading guilty to all 24 charges and asking for leniency.

Following his guilty plea, the Humanist Association stated that the plea had not been "part of the agreed legal strategy" and that Bala may have been subject to intimidation by the prosecution, and/or "tricked into pleading guilty in the hopes of a light sentence".

The chair of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, a network of countries promoting freedom of religion or belief worldwide, has called for Bala to be pardoned.

Release from prison International pressure from European governments and campaigning from Humanists International member organisations led to Mubarak's release from prison in late 2024. and has a wife and a young son, who was born six weeks before Bala's arrest.

The Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka has expressed concern that Bala's arrest was part of a "plague of religious extremism" that has afflicted Nigeria in recent decades.