Christian Mother Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison in Nigeria
Liyatu Samuel Dawa, a Christian mother from Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, was reportedly sentenced to 14 years in prison for sharing her faith. The Muslim woman involved in the case testified that she chose to convert to Christianity voluntarily. The conviction under Section 210 of Borno State’s Penal Code has raised questions about the evidence and protections for religious freedom under Nigeria’s constitution.
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A Christian woman in northeastern Nigeria, Liyatu Samuel Dawa, has reportedly been sentenced to 14 years in prison after sharing her faith with a Muslim woman who testified that she converted to Christianity voluntarily. The report says the full judgment and case record are needed to establish the precise legal basis for the conviction and the court’s reasoning.
Justice A. B. Kumdila of the Borno State High Court sentenced Dawa, from the Gwoza area, under Section 210 of the state’s Penal Code. The woman who converted told the court she had acted of her own free will and had not been forced; Dawa reportedly said she had only advised her and asked the court for leniency.
The report says the conviction has prompted questions about how the charge relates to the evidence and Nigeria’s constitutional protections for religious freedom. It does not provide the charge sheet, full judgment, or complete account of the evidence considered by the court.
Dawa’s husband, Evangelist Amos Suleman, said he had gone into hiding after receiving threats to his life. He reportedly spent months in detention before being released on bail and said he could not safely visit his wife; the threats and the identities of those responsible have not been independently verified in the report.
Gwoza and the wider Borno region have experienced violence and displacement linked to attacks by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province. The report does not establish a direct connection between those armed groups and the legal proceedings against Dawa.
Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, as described in the report, protects freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the right to change religion and to manifest or teach religious beliefs. It also prohibits religious discrimination against citizens, subject to the Constitution’s provisions and limitations.
The report identifies the distinction between a voluntary conversion and any separate alleged criminal conduct as central to understanding the case. Gavvs Katiya, chairman of the Gwoza Refugees Resettlement Initiative, criticized the sentence as disproportionate, while the Borno State Government had not publicly commented on it.
Religious freedom and conversion rights in plural societies
In a plural society, Catholic teaching defends the right of every person to seek religious truth, follow conscience, publicly practice and share a religion, or change or reject religious affiliation—without coercion or unjust civil penalties. This is not a claim that all religions are equally true. The right is grounded in human dignity and the nature of faith: belief must be freely embraced, while public authority must protect the rights of others and the common good.
The Church grounds religious freedom in the dignity of the person, not in a judgment that every religion or belief is equally true. The right protects a person’s freedom from external coercion in religious matters; it does not make error true or morally endorse every belief. The Church’s social teaching explicitly distinguishes a right to religious freedom from “a moral licence to adhere to error.”
This distinction helps explain why Catholics can affirm both that religious truth matters and that people must not be forced to accept it. As the Second Vatican Council teaches:
The act of faith is of its very nature a free act. … In consequence, the principle of religious freedom makes no small contribution to the creation of an environment in which men can without hindrance be invited to the Christian faith, embrace it of their own free will, and profess it effectively in their whole manner of life.
The point is not that faith is unimportant, but that faith cannot be produced by force. The Council’s teaching, as summarized by the International Theological Commission, is that no one can be forced into religious belief; forced conversion is contrary to both the nature of Christian faith and human nature.
Religious freedom is broader than the private ability to hold an opinion. It includes worship and practice, individually and collectively; public profession of belief; and the ability to share one’s faith with others. Pope Francis warns that pluralism is not healthy if it silences religion by confining it to private life or places of worship; such enforced privatization can itself become discriminatory.
The right also includes choosing, leaving, or changing religious affiliation. The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue states that civil freedom of religion includes the right “to adhere to or not to adhere to a religion or to change from one religion to another.” It also notes that people who change religions may face marginalization, loss of work or civil rights, imprisonment, or worse—forms of pressure that violate the right being discussed.
This means conversion rights protect people in more than one direction. A person must not be forced to become Christian, and a person who freely seeks to become Christian must not be punished or threatened for doing so. Likewise, Christians’ right to share their faith does not entitle them to compel anyone’s response. The Church supports free witness, not coercive conversion.
A plural society needs to distinguish respectful religious invitation from pressure that undermines another person’s freedom. The Church recognizes the right to invite others to understand one’s religion and to bear witness publicly, including before people of other religions. But the invitation must respect the other person’s rights and religious sensibilities.
That qualification does not mean religious speech must be hidden or reduced to bland, noncommittal statements. In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis argues that respect for minorities should not be used to silence the convictions of a believing majority, just as a majority’s beliefs must not erase the rights of minorities. A genuinely plural public square permits people to express religious convictions while protecting others’ freedom to disagree, decline, or respond in kind.
Coercion can come from government, but it can also involve social or economic pressure. The International Theological Commission identifies manipulation, exploitation, and isolationism as possible abuses that public authorities have a duty to address, especially where vulnerable people are at risk. It also cautions, in effect, against treating every religious commitment as equally sound: religious claims remain subject to reason and the requirements of the common good. The practical distinction is between protecting people from manipulation or rights violations and suppressing religious belief simply because it is unpopular or unfamiliar.
The state should neither compel religious belief nor prevent people from acting according to conscience. The Church’s social teaching describes both as failures of religious freedom. Public authorities also have responsibilities to protect civil order and defend citizens—particularly the vulnerable—against abuses carried out under religious claims.
The Church’s account therefore involves both liberty and limits. The right to manifest and share faith does not authorize violating another person’s rights; conversely, protecting others’ rights should not become a pretext for excluding peaceful religious expression from public life. The sources identify the relevant balance: public religious witness is legitimate, but it must respect others; and legitimate protection of public order must not become coercion of conscience.
A further test is reciprocity. The International Theological Commission argues that peaceful religious rights should be reciprocal: the freedom afforded to religious minorities in one country should correspond to freedom for minorities where that same religion is the majority. Reciprocity is not a substitute for protecting rights—it should not imply that a state may restrict its own minorities because another state does so. Rather, it exposes the inconsistency of demanding freedom for one’s own community while denying it to others.
For Catholics, religious freedom is a principle to defend for everyone, not only for the Church or for Christians living as minorities. The Church’s interreligious guidance calls Christians to denounce religious persecution and the political instrumentalization of religion. Where conversion leads to threats, exclusion, or deprivation of civil rights, the response should include sustained discussion and, where possible, joint action with people of other faiths.
The principle also calls for honesty about what religious freedom does—and does not—claim. It does not require Catholics to regard all religions as equally true, nor does it demand that religious convictions be kept out of public life. It does require that people be free to seek and embrace religious truth without being forced, and that those who disagree remain protected from discrimination and coercion. In a plural society, that freedom is not indifference to truth; it is the social and civil space in which conscience can respond to truth freely.