Nigeria’s Supreme Court is set to decide whether a Christian activist will face capital punishment for a crime he did not commit. Nigerian authorities now have the chance to exonerate him – and heal the wounds caused by Kaduna state’s divisive ex-governor.
Christian activist Victor “Zidane” Solomon, detained in 2018 on minor charges, today faces the death penalty for a crime he did not commit. His case is emblematic of persecution faced by Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Source: social media
Eight years ago, Victor Solomon – popularly nicknamed Zidane – was a promising 26-year-old entrusted to organize and protect the youth of his Christian community in Nigeria’s troubled Middle Belt.
Today, he is on death row, framed for a murder he did not commit.
How did this now 34-year-old father of two, who led a community police force until his 2018 arrest, find himself in this situation?
The answer, according to his lawyer Marc Jacob – who previously served as attorney general of Kaduna State – is that Solomon was an effective leader, standing in the way of Muslim exploitation of his community.
“Victor was leader of Christian youths in that community, responsible to protect the Christians from all the attacks that were ongoing and enforce discipline within the community,” Jacob told Christian Solidarity International by phone.
Community police are a nationwide phenomenon that have become institutionalized in swathes of Nigeria over the past decade. They are recognized by and often receive training from state police and military forces, Jacob explained.
Solomon was put in charge of the patrol for his community, located in Kasuwan Magani locality in the central Nigerian state of Kaduna.
In this role, he was not known for confronting Muslims, Jacob said, but rather for enforcing discipline among the youth in his own Christian community.
“If you come to Kaduna, there is a place you will find dozens of Muslim youths dealing in hardcore drugs. They don’t drink alcohol but do hard drugs,” said Jacob.
“When Christian boys get badly addicted, the parents – if rich – will send them abroad for treatment, but locally, people don’t have the money.”
Instead, the community entrusted Solomon and his team to stop their children from fraternizing with those Muslim youth dealing drugs.
The safety of girls was also a top concern, according to the lawyer, recounting that “a particular incident was to do with Christian young girls engaging with in sexual relations with Muslims boys in that community.”
Solomon’s team would “actually physically prevent them from engaging in drug use. They were physically disciplining the Christian youth,” using a culturally accepted practice of public caning, said Jacob.
“He was not targeting the Muslims but keeping order with their own, and it was sanctioned by the Church and members of their community,” he added.
But Solomon’s activities sparked the ire of neighboring Muslim youths, “who saw him and his team preventing them from taking advantage of Christian girls,” Jacob said.
“That’s where his problems started.”
In 2018, when Solomon was detained, Kaduna State was under the governorship of Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, a divisive politician eager to pander to the Muslim base in mixed areas like Kasuwan Magani.
Under El-Rufai’s tenure, attacks on Christians in Kaduna State by Fulani Muslim militia groups escalated, and the governor is widely viewed as having provided cover for the attacks.
Local Muslims “have tried government after government to get the entire area declared Muslim, to get rulership, to get appointments,” said Jacob, who served as attorney general of Kaduna State from 2005 to 2007.
For El-Rufai, who had “a bigoted approach and a desire to show he was for the Muslims”, Solomon was an ideal target.
“The Muslim community took particular interest in [Solomon], and with their governor involved, it was easy to get him on trumped up charges,” he added.
Jacob first learned that Solomon had been detained in 2018 and was languishing off the books in military custody.
The former attorney general managed to secure the young man’s transfer from military custody to a regular prison in May of 2020.
At the time, a note from a military intelligence officer stated that the “investigation conducted could not establish the suspect’s culpability.”
It continued: “But the suspect has been with 1 MIB (Military Intelligence Brigade) on the instruction of the Kaduna State government.”
The legacy of then-Kaduna State Governor El-Rufai has since come under intense scrutiny.
“We know how it was when it was El-Rufai was there. It was toxic,” Nigeria’s current defense minister, Christopher Musa, said in a primetime interview on September 4.
“He divided the state into two; you can’t imagine that in a country that’s supposed to be one,” added Musa, who took office last December.
“We can never be happy with somebody who has deliberately planned the killing of our people.”
Solomon would be acquitted in May 2024 for the initial set of charges, namely “inciting civil unrest”, levied against him.
But during his pre-trial detention, as he became eligible to be released on bail, the state prosecutor in 2020 levied a new and far more serious charge, this time with a different court and judge.
Solomon was retroactively accused of committing a murder; a purported crime for which there was no hard evidence implicating him – or even proof that the alleged victim ever existed.
During the trial, the prosecution made “no effort to present any weapon. No doctor was called as a witness to say what led to that alleged death … No DNA, no autopsy, no pictures,” said Jacob.
“The only testimony was of a person who claimed to have witnessed the murder. Not even a death certificate.”
The legal team argued that the case was full of holes and far from the standard required to override the presumption of innocence for a charge carrying the penalty of death.
“When it comes to evidence in a criminal case, there should be proof beyond doubt,” said Jacob. But in this case, “everything was circumstantial.”
Solomon was nonetheless found guilty by a high court in Kaduna State in January. A court of appeals later upheld the sentence.
Rachael Erin, a barrister, CSI partner, and project director for Nigeria’s SOZO Humanitarian Aid Trust Foundation, believes that Solomon was targeted for his leadership role.
“When you take the strongholds of the community, you weaken the community,” she told Christian Solidarity International by phone in October.
She shared the testimony of a community leader in Solomon’s hometown – who could not be named for security reasons – but who attested to the vacuum left by Solomon’s arrest.
“He was sad because Victor was the one person who was able to pull the youths together in a good way, mobilize them whenever there was any threat.
“He thinks that’s one of the reasons why attention went on him – so the community could be easily invaded,” she said.
Community members and human rights activists held a march for Solomon in May, holding signs reading, “Equal treatment for Victor” and lambasting the verdict in a press conference.
“Bandits have not been prosecuted. Even those arrested are given amnesty and returned to the society, while Victor Solomon, who was defending himself and community, is sentenced to death,” said Samuel Wuyah, the Kaduna state chairman of the Middle Belt Youth Forum.
Christian Solidarity International on September 17 warned the UN Human Rights Council of an “organized campaign” by Fulani Muslim militias to drive out indigenous Christians in the Middle Belt – contested ground between Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north and Christian-majority south.
UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief Nazila Ghanea over the summer further reported that rural Christian communities in Nigeria were being coerced into so-called “peace deals” with Fulani bandit groups, which effectively exposed them to pillage and rape.
Solomon was thus seen by his community a symbol of resistance against Muslim dominance, and his treatment by the judiciary is conversely viewed as indicative of an enforcing of Islamist supremacy.
The response of the Supreme Court to the challenge being levied by Solomon’s legal team – and of the government to calls for the unjust verdict to be overturned – will serve as a litmus test of Nigeria’s capacity to ensure religious equality.
