A Nigerian federal court dismissed criminal defamation charges against a journalist who spent 84 days in custody for quoting a senator's criticism of how officials described attacks on Christian farmers.

The Federal High Court in Kaduna ruled in May that prosecutors presented "no evidence to prove the essential elements of the alleged offense" against Luka Binniyat, a Nigerian journalist arrested in November 2021 after writing an article for The Epoch Times about religiously motivated violence in Nigeria's Middle Belt region. The court called the evidence against him "manifestly unreliable," ending a legal ordeal that stretched more than four years.

Binniyat's crime, in the eyes of Kaduna state authorities, was journalism. He wrote an article headlined "In Nigeria, Police Decry Massacres as 'Wicked' But Make No Arrests," in which he quoted Nigerian Sen. Danjuma Laah accusing the Kaduna government of using its commissioner of internal security, Samuel Aruwan, "to cause confusion to cover up the genocide going on in Christian Southern Kaduna by describing the measure as a 'clash.'" For quoting a sitting legislator's own words, Binniyat was charged with cyberstalking Aruwan.

ADF International, the global arm of the nonprofit legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, announced the acquittal on Thursday. The outcome drew pointed commentary from both Binniyat and his legal advocates about the state of press freedom in Nigeria, particularly when the subject is violence against Christians.

Binniyat spent 84 days behind bars before making bail

Nigerian authorities arrested Binniyat in November 2021. He sat in custody for 84 days before his release on bail in January 2022. The legal fight dragged on for years after that, hanging over his career and his freedom while the underlying violence he reported on continued.

The charge itself, cyberstalking a government official, was the kind of legal tool that authoritarian regimes routinely use to silence inconvenient reporting. Binniyat did not fabricate a story. He did not harass anyone. He quoted a Nigerian senator's public criticism of how a state official characterized an attack on Christian communities. That was enough for the state to lock him up and prosecute him for more than four years.

Sean Nelson, ADF's senior counsel for global religious freedom, framed the ruling as overdue vindication, but also as a warning about the broader pattern. Nelson said in a statement:

"This ruling is a vindication for Luka, but it should also be a wake-up call: accurate reporting on atrocities is not a crime, and journalists covering religious persecution deserve protection, not prosecution. Across Nigeria, Christians are being slaughtered for their faith."

Nelson added that Binniyat did nothing more than "accurately quote a Nigerian legislator's own words." The case, in other words, was never about defamation or cyberstalking. It was about a government official who did not want his characterization of anti-Christian violence challenged in print.

Governments that punish citizens for expressing faith-based views or reporting on religious persecution are not confined to any single continent. But the Nigerian case stands out for how nakedly it targeted a journalist for doing basic reporting.

Thousands killed, millions displaced, and the press gets prosecuted

Binniyat's case did not unfold in a vacuum. Thousands of Nigerians have been killed in recent years as attacks on predominantly Christian farming communities across the Middle Belt have intensified. Millions have been displaced. Islamic extremist groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State operate across Nigeria's northern states, and the violence has drawn increasing international attention.

President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern late last year, citing the "existential" threat Christians face from radical Islamic terrorist groups and radicalized herders. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom backed that designation in its 2026 annual report, urging the State Department to maintain Nigeria's CPC status for engaging in or tolerating "particularly severe" violations of religious freedom.

The U.S. military has been directly involved. American forces conducted Christmas Day airstrikes against Islamic State militants in northern Nigeria last year. Earlier this year, the U.S. sent 200 troops to Nigeria to train local forces against Islamic extremists. A joint U.S.-Nigerian operation in May killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as the Islamic State's leader in Nigeria.

Yet the U.S. withdrew those 200 troops last month, pledging to continue sharing intelligence with the Nigerian government. A Nigerian lawyer using the pseudonym Jabez Musa told The Christian Post earlier this month that the security situation had deteriorated since the withdrawal:

"We see daily attacks being carried out by the militants. And the communities have no protection. They are on their own. People are killed, and women are abducted."

That is the environment in which Nigerian authorities decided their priority was prosecuting a journalist for quoting a senator. Christians face daily attacks. Communities lack protection. Women are abducted. And the state spent four years trying to convict a reporter for writing about it.

Persecution of Christians is not limited to Nigeria's borders. In China, authorities have raided house church services and detained pastors and children, part of a broader pattern of governments treating Christian worship and expression as threats to state authority.

Binniyat calls for press freedom to cover Christian persecution

Binniyat himself was measured in his public response, more focused on the broader problem than on his own ordeal. He said:

"I am grateful that I was released and the charges against me were dismissed. However, my experience shows that there is much work to be done in Nigeria regarding protecting free expression, especially when it comes to speaking out on religious freedom and reporting honestly about what is really happening to Christians in the country."

He added a direct appeal for press freedom as a matter of life and death for persecuted communities:

"It is essential that as Christians face widespread persecution throughout Nigeria, the press is free to quote what public figures are saying and doing about this crisis."

Binniyat described his arrest as "troubling", a word that understates what happened to him. He was jailed for nearly three months and spent more than four years under criminal prosecution for the act of quoting a public official in a news article. The court found zero evidence supporting the charge. The prosecution's case was, in the court's own words, "manifestly unreliable."

Cases like Binniyat's follow a pattern familiar to anyone watching how governments handle speech they find inconvenient. A Finnish Christian lawmaker recently fought a UK travel ban tied to a hate speech conviction over her biblical views on marriage, another instance of legal systems treating Christian expression as a prosecutable offense rather than protected speech.

Nelson, the ADF counsel, put the stakes plainly: "Journalists have both a duty and a right to report on these violent, religiously-motivated attacks. Without their reporting, the suffering they face would go largely unnoticed."

That is the core of the matter. The Kaduna government official whose characterization of anti-Christian violence Sen. Laah criticized, Samuel Aruwan, the commissioner of internal security, had described an attack on Christian farmers as a "clash." Laah called that framing a cover-up. Binniyat reported Laah's words. And the state's response was to charge the reporter, not address the violence.

Even within Christian communities, institutional conflicts over authority and accountability continue to surface. A Scottish bishop recently excommunicated the head of a traditionalist order over disputed governance, a reminder that struggles over who speaks for the faithful play out at every level of church life.

Four years of prosecution, zero evidence

The Federal High Court's ruling was unambiguous. No evidence. Manifestly unreliable prosecution. Full dismissal. But the damage was already done, 84 days in jail, four years of legal uncertainty, and a message sent to every other Nigerian journalist who might consider covering attacks on Christians in the Middle Belt.

That message is the real story. The acquittal is welcome. But a government that can jail a reporter for three months, drag him through years of prosecution on fabricated charges, and face no apparent consequences for doing so has already achieved its goal. The next journalist will think twice. The next senator's criticism might go unreported. And the next attack on a Christian farming community might be described as a "clash" without anyone pushing back.

When a government prosecutes the reporter instead of the violence, it tells you which one it considers the bigger problem.