ANOTHER NIGERIAN WOMAN RISKS DEATH BY STONING

Hafsatu Abubakar, an 18-year-old Muslim who could face death if she is convicted of adultery in northern Nigeria, is due to appear in court today.
Her lawyer, Abdulkadir Imam Ibrahim, said she is being held in prison in the northwestern city of Sokoto with her one month-old daughter. She has been in jail since neighbours charged her under Muslim sharia law on December 14, 2001, he said.
The lawyer told Reuters: "she is in prison together with her baby. She was refused bail and no one has notified me that she was moved (to prison)."
A Sokoto Prison official denied that Abubakar was being kept there, but said there were a number of young nursing mothers in the jail. Officials at the state solicitor-general´s office said they did not know of the case.
Ibrahim also represents Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu, a mother of five who has been sentenced to death by stoning by a Sokoto sharia court.
A dozen states in predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria have been implementing sharia law since 1999 in a move that has set off deadly riots between Muslims and Christians.
Obasanjo appears helpless to halt the introduction of the Islamic code or its strict application because of Nigeria´s complex American-style constitutional separation of powers between regional authorities and the central government.
Neighbours took Abubakar to the police a month ago after the birth of her daughter and charged her with adultery at the sharia court. On January 9 she was denied bail.
Abubakar told the court that she was not married, her lawyer said.
He said Abubakar told him she was married for two years but has been divorced for the past year.
"If she is married, after conviction she could be stoned to death," Ibrahim said. "But if she is not, it will be 100 lashes because that is (the lesser charge of fornication)."