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A Nigerian Prisoner of Conscience Is Free, but Others Remain in Danger [1]

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Date: 2025-07

It was announced in January that Mubarak Bala, a Nigerian humanist leader, had been released from prison in August 2024 after more than four years of unjust detention for expressing his views on religion. He was detained in Kaduna State in April 2020 and transferred to the more repressive Kano State, where he eventually pleaded guilty in April 2022 to violating state laws against insulting religion and causing a public disturbance through his social media posts. His 24-year prison sentence was reduced to five years on appeal in 2024. In April of this year, he relocated to Germany for a six-month residency with that country’s Humanistische Vereinigung (Humanist Association).

Freedom House’s Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners worked with partners around the world to advocate for Bala during his detention. In the interview below, Bala answered Freedom House’s questions about his experiences and the international campaign to secure his liberty.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Views expressed by interview subjects are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Freedom House.

What did your work as president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria entail, and why did you feel it was important?

I was the president of both HAN and the Northern Nigerian Humanist Association, whose primary task was to secure, protect, and provide a sense of community to the irreligious, who are an oppressed, marginalized minority within the country—marginalized by members of both [the Muslim and Christian] religions, who are in the majority. We, by extension, extend the same to other minorities effectively marginalized, the smaller sects within the Muslim community, the Christians marginalized and being massacred by terrorists especially in the north, the traditional worshippers enslaved and raided for centuries, and the women and children downtrodden by male domination and a slave system called the Almajiri System [Islamic boarding schools that rely on forced begging by students], which enslaves 12 million children under Islamic tutelage. We establish safehouses; engage hostile institutions for dialogues; normalize humanism; encourage freedom of and from religion, as well as free speech; and provide scholarships and small grants for entrepreneurship to individuals, as well as for relocations both within the country and abroad, in dire circumstances. We provide legal assistance as well.

Did you foresee the possibility that you might be detained in relation to your work?

I have foreseen my death, especially since the price one pays for apostasy is death, but I went ahead and did it anyway, because my conscience couldn’t allow me to be a believer or to fake faith for survival, especially since I’m educated and an adult, in a supposedly secular country. I envisaged an abduction by terrorists or being mobbed by vigilantes who vowed to murder me for leaving and betraying the religion I was born into, and then for defending myself after the fatwas, which was blasphemous to their ears. Yet I never expected the abduction to come from my own government.

During your detention, was there anything that gave you comfort or hope, or otherwise helped you cope?

My comfort was that no one died in the whole saga, though I later learned that many were outed as closeted apostates, and at least one was murdered. Others are untracked yet. There was no comfort, however, in coping daily with a 2,000-strong, almost all Muslim prison, where I was unprotected and could be murdered at the slightest leak that I’m an apostate. . . . I gladly welcomed the sentence, knowing it meant I could seek transfer elsewhere within the prison system and find a way out of the abduction.

Were your family or loved ones also supported during your imprisonment?

To my relief, after months and years without contact, I got to discover that friends and organizations had lent support, both emotional and financial, to my immediate family and newborn son. This brought immediate relief and ended my dread that I had failed the community and my family.

What role do you think international advocacy played in getting your sentence reduced and, ultimately, in securing your release? Is there anything specific that you think was particularly helpful?

International attention was what made them not murder me in captivity. I was taken along with a fellow humanist who was later released, so it was immediately made public. Were that not the case, I would have been vanished just like many other abductees who have yet to be found. It’s most often powerful individuals in government, with dangerous ideologies, who abuse government capabilities for private or dogmatic agendas or politics. Many have vanished without a trace in such circumstances; bodies are never found, and the state keeps mum. The advocacy kept the authorities acting as if it were protocol and paperwork, while in reality they were preparing me for slaughter. They knew it meant death taking me where they took me, and they said it to me, confident that I would not survive to tell this. . . . We’re currently at the Supreme Court to determine if abduction and smuggling from point A to B, and trial with the laws of point B, is legal and legitimate, since I have made it out alive.

What do you hope to accomplish during your residency with Humanistische Vereinigung in Germany and beyond?

I hope to achieve freedom, or start over, in safety and security, from a safe distance, to keep the hope, the fight for freedom and justice, rights and conscience—and when the resources and situation changes, return home to effect positive change, and save my country from the dangerous trajectory it’s plunging all of us into: theocracy and lawlessness, anarchy and jihadi mentality. I hope for actual secularization of not just the country, but the most dangerous region currently, the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa.

What message would you like to share with the people and organizations who stood by you throughout your ordeal?

I think I owe them not just gratitude, but my life, which was saved directly by their interventions, whether those were at the diplomatic level, in the media, with governments, legal, or simply individualistic and conscientious, even from within the country and the Muslim community. The injustices cannot be reversed, but it’s hoped that no one would or should ever suffer such blatant risk to their lives for dogma and theocratic agendas. I can’t thank you all enough. Your hours of advocacy, resources, both material and in kind, prayers and goodwill, postcards and letters to my government, really did save my life, literally.

Is there anything else you’d like people to know?

Yes. There are more victims of [persecution for alleged] blasphemy and apostasy still languishing in jails and homes in my country. Please keep the government accountable and punish perpetrators. I only got saved because I happened to be educated and could speak English, and I have allies that spared resources and hours to see me free. Others are not so lucky. I visited some of them in their prisons and sent others whatever help I could muster. But my powers are limited. Do work with Nigeria and other Islamic countries that unjustly incarcerate people just for exercising their rights to conscience. Thank you.

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[1] Url: https://freedomhouse.org/article/nigerian-prisoner-conscience-free-others-remain-danger

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