A man has shared his personal experience of how he was almost killed for blasphemy in Sokoto as a junior secondary school student in 2007.
This comes in the wake of the lynching of Deborah Samuel, a 200-level Home Economics student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, over blasphemy in the early hours of Thursday, May 12.
Taking to the microblogging platform, Twitter, the man, with the handle @ChinonsoOK, narrated that he was almost killed at the age of 13 by his classmates for blasphemy but was fortunately saved by the then school’s Vice-Principal.
He tweeted:
“I refuse to comment or even read posts from that carnage that happened in Sokoto. The PTSD I have from my own experience in that same Sokoto is still fresh. My classmates in JSS2!!! were going to behead me if the Muslim vice principal had not smuggled me out of the school. 2007.
“I had never been that scared in my life. People who I thought were my friends bayed for blood. How dare I? An infidel blaspheme? I was 13, the boys trying to kill me were around the same age. Yes! 13, 14, 15 year-olds. The VP hid me in his office and tried to calm them down.
“To no avail. Before long, word had got out of the school that an “infidel blasphemed” and a mob gathered outside the school walls vowing to burn down the school if I wasn’t handed over. Thank goodness for the bravery of that VP. He smuggled me out asked me never to return.”
