A 29-year-old Nigerian man who confessed to committing...

A 29-year-old Nigerian man who confessed to committing fornication last June was Thursday given 100 strokes of the cane, under the controversial Islamic Sharia law.
Sulaiman Shittu, a welder, was publicly caned by two 12-year-old boys at the Central Mosque in Nigeria's south-western city of Ibadan, the first time an offender would be punished in the mostly-Christian south under the harsh version of the Sharia introduced in the country in 2000.
Some 500 people, most of them Islamic faithful, gathered at the Mosque to witness the punishment meted out to Shittu about midday Thursday. But the 100 lashes did not seem to have had much effect on Shittu, who walked to another part of the Mosque for prayers after the punishment.
However, his father, who surfaced after the caning, protested against the punishment, saying he should have been contacted by the "Independent Sharia Panel" in Oyo State, which handed down the sentence.
Shittu had willingly approached the panel to say that he had sexual intercourse with a Muslim sister, whom he simply identified as Suwebatu, and demanded to be punished according to the Islamic law.
Though the panel gave him several opportunities to reconsider his demand for punishment, Shittu was said to have insisted on being punished, and then made to sign an undertaking before the panel satisfied his wish. "This is to certify that I, Sulaiman Shittu, came to Oyo State Independent Sharia Panel and requested that I be punished according to the Sharia for committing fornication sometime in June.< I had sexual relationship with a lady to whom I am not legally married," he said in the undertaking.
At least two men have had their hands amputated for stealing, while several other convicts have been caned publicly for fornication and drunkenness in northern Nigeria since the new version of Sharia was introduced. The punishment in Ibadan, 140-km from Lagos, is bound to rekindle the debate on the Sharia, described as unconstitutional by Nigeria's federal government.