Mubarak Bala, 40, was convicted in a court in the northern city of Kano after, in a surprise move, he pleaded guilty to 18 charges relating to a controversial Facebook post shared in 2020.

Despite four years in prison for blasphemy, Mubarak Bala defends his atheist beliefs but says he keeps a low profile now in the face of threats in his mostly conservative Muslim region of Nigeria.

The most high-profile case is that of the president of the Nigerian Humanist Association Mubarak Bala, who was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison last week by a Kano State High Court after ...