Christianah Oluwasesin wasn’t lucky enough to tell her story was lynched in Gombe by some group of Muslims mob

Christianah Oluwasesin wasn’t lucky enough to tell her story.
She was lynched in Gombe by some group of Muslims mob after being accused of desecrating the Qur’an while invigilating an examination at a secondary school.

The alleged desecration was never established. She was accused, but the Qur’an she was allegedly accused of desecrating was never produced or found. Christianah was a teacher of Government at Government Day Secondary School in Gandu, Gombe State, northern Nigeria.

he was a married mother of two and had already given the state authorities notice of her resignation. She was preparing to join her husband, Femi, in their hometown of Abeokuta, where he had taken up a job as a laboratory technician at a hospital.

She was looking forward to being reunited with her husband after the final day of examinations.
On that fateful day, Oluwasesin was supervising a class writing a final examination in Islamic Religious Knowledge. To prevent cheating and other examination malpractice, she collected books, papers and bags before the examination began in the all-female class and placed them in front of the classroom.
Usually, such items were returned to the students as they submitted their answer scripts.

Soon after the bags had been placed in front of the class, one of the girls began to cry. She reportedly told her classmates that she had a copy of the Qur’an in her bag and that Oluwasesin had touched the bag.
According to the allegation, because Oluwasesin was a Christian, touching the bag amounted to desecrating the Qur’an.
The students immediately began shouting, “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great).
Yila, another teacher, alerted members of staff, who rushed to the scene to restore calm. Yila managed to take Oluwasesin to the principal’s office.

The principal left Oluwasesin in his office while he went out to calm the students.
When he returned, he was shocked to find that people from outside the school had joined the chaos. They were reportedly destroying school property and demanding that Oluwasesin be handed over to them.

The principal and several members of staff tried to protect her, but the mob broke into the principal’s office and dragged her outside.
The principal tried to rescue her as members of the mob beat her with an iron rod, causing a serious head wound. He pleaded with them not to kill her, but they reportedly insisted that she must die.
Yila later recounted:

The principal succeeded in getting Oluwasesin to the school gate. There was a house near the gate, and he dragged her into the house, but the rioting mob went into the house and dragged her out again.
She was eventually beaten to death. According to accounts of the incident, the mob placed old mats and dirt on her body and set it on fire.
The students and rioters also set fire to classrooms, the library, Oluwasesin’s car and Yila’s motorcycle.
Firefighters reportedly said they could not reach the school because roads leading to the area had been blocked.

After the incident, 16 suspects were arrested but were later released without charge.
Oluwasesin’s husband, Femi, and their children subsequently went to court, seeking compensation from the Gombe State Government and asking the government to accept responsibility.
In 2010, Femi reportedly began receiving death threats from anonymous callers who demanded that he withdraw the case.

And perhaps one of the most disturbing unanswered questions remains this:
Where was the Qur’an that Oluwasesin was allegedly accused of desecrating?
Throughout the chaos that led to her death, the alleged Qur’an was reportedly never produced.

As Yila said:
Whether the Quran was in the bag of that student, nobody knows.
A woman lost her life over an accusation that was never properly established.
This is what religious extremism can lead to when accusations replace evidence and mob violence replaces justice.

To me, this is one more reason to question any ideology or religious system when its interpretation is used to justify violence against innocent people. Religion should never be an excuse for murder.
This is why I fear Islam more than any other religion in this world