On Friday, the Court of appeal discharged and acquitted Prof Solomon Tarfa, who had been imprisoned on charges of forgery by a Kano High Court.

Tarfa’s incarceration and vindication on appeal was the second time in 22 years of persecution by Kano state government for running a Christian orphanage in the state.

Tarfa had similarly been charged with running a fake orphanage in year 2000 by a mobile magistrate court which conviction was overturned on appeal to the high court.

Almost 20 years later on Christmas Day, 2019 Kano state again arrested him and charged him for the same offense contrary to the law against double jeopardy.

According to the Presiding Justice of the court of appeal Kano, Justice Mbaba the evidence of a grown former orphan at DuMerci was helpful to the appeal.

“I believe that was the evidence that formed the basis on which the charges of abduction and kidnaping against Appellant were dismissed, as the evidence of the Prosecution, rather presented Appellant as a man on the role of honour and fame, instead of infamy, in my opinion.”

His Lordship concluded thus: “I set aside the conviction of the Appellant, and hold that this case was very unfortunate, going by the evidence of PW1, I cannot understand why it was taken out, in the first place, against the Appellant. Appellant is hereby discharged and acquitted of the said charge.”

According to international human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe who was part of a global advocacy effort for Prof Tarfa, “this was an outstanding verdict from the court of appeal. The court rightly noted that this was an honorable man conducting humanitarian deeds and this case should never have been brought against him as I stated previously.

At a time when paid professors were on strike for better conditions, Prof Tarfa had committed his life to catering for unwanted babies. Rather than receive a national honor, he was imprisoned on fake charges. What a country!

Kano state is an embarrassment to religious freedom in Nigeria.

I commend my learned colleague Sunny Akanni and his team for a successful outing and urge Kano state to release the Christian orphans they took and Islamized since 2019.”

Ogebe added: “I want to alert my Lords Justices in Nigeria that they too and not just politicians are subject to scrutiny and visa bans by the United States government for anti-democratic and unjust rulings.

That notwithstanding I want to be clear that the US failed by not designating Nigeria a country of particular concern (CPC) for religious persecution when Kano state’s actions against prof Tarfa amongst others prove that terrorists are not Nigeria’s only problem. It’s unfortunate that Prof Tarfa missed the wedding of one of the orphans he raised during his time in prison. I hope Kano state will stop the persecution.”

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