Sharia judge flogged for boozing

Sharia punishments include amputations

A Sharia court judge in northern Nigeria has been flogged in public after being found guilty of drinking alcohol.

Mohammadu Na'ila, received 80 strokes of the cane on Friday in front of an estimated crowd of 5,000 people in the town of Kaura Namoda in north-eastern Zamfara state.

He is the first Islamic court official to be punished in public, since a swathe of northern Nigerian states introduced full Islamic law in the past two years.

The relatively light punishment was handed down by his brother-in-law, also a judge, who said that he was inclined to leniency because he is elderly.

The BBC's Ibrahim Dossara in Zamfara said there was cheering and laughter among the crowd as the sentence was carried out.

Judge Na'ila is suspended from office and is expected to be dismissed.

Caught out

The case has also led to calls for all Sharia judges to be screened to rid the courts of a few bad apples, but Zamfara's authorities have rejected this.

Zamfara, became the first state to re-introduce Islamic law in Northern Nigeria two years ago.

The Islamic code bans alcohol, and regulates the social conduct of men and women in public.

Our correspondent said that the elderly judge was taken by a group of activists, known as the Sharia Implementation Committee, to a police station after he was found behaving in a lively manner, with alcohol on his breath.

The governor of Zamfara, Ahmad Sani, said the conviction of a Sharia court judge was a clear indication that "the legal system is not discriminatory" and proved that "Sharia is not only for the common man, but for all irrespective of their positions in society."

Nigeria's sizeable Christian population opposes the implementation of Sharia, and tensions in the north has spilt over into violence between Muslims and Christians.