Silencing Scepticism: The Quiet Persecution of West African Atheists
In February, earlier this year, a quiet revolution flickered to life in Accra, Ghana, though few beyond the city seemed to notice. Amid the pious clutter of billboards in Cantonments—a district where scripture and commerce jostle for space—a new sign appeared. Its message was simple, almost disarming: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” Funded by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) and organized by an emerging local group, Accra Atheists, it was, astonishingly, the first known atheist billboard ever erected on the African continent.
Its phrasing was carefully chosen by the group’s president, Roslyn Mould, to avoid causing offence given the sensitive nature of the topic. The billboard did not aim to challenge people of faith but rather to acknowledge the existence of atheists in Africa. She explains that “This billboard represents not just visibility but validation for those who often feel isolated in their non-belief. Thanks to FFRF’s unwavering support, we’ve achieved something historic. This moment will never be forgotten.” In a continent where more than half of the countries still enforce Edwardian-coded blasphemy laws, the Sharia, or a combination of both, the public recognition of irreligious people in Ghana is a significant step forward.
Being irreligious or an atheist in Africa has always been an uphill battle. Unlike forms of religious scepticism in the Middle East, where the strict enforcement of the Sharia represses religious diversity, and unlike the Americas, where conservative Catholics and increasingly fervent evangelical groups frequently target secular groups, atheists and irreligious people in Africa must confront a myriad of oppositional forces. Scott Jacobsen of Humanists International, who has voiced support for similar projects across Africa, compares the burden of irreligious Africans to Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. He writes that “African atheists and Humanists are simultaneously confronting: Arab colonialist influence through Islam. European colonialist influence through Christianity. Traditional superstitions and indigenous beliefs that existed before colonization and persist today. It is an enormous challenge, and that is what makes the African case so unique. There, atheists are not just fighting against one ideological system—they are combating all three simultaneously”.
Ghana was, by any measure, a calculated place to test such a public gesture. Although the country is deeply religious, it does not criminalize blasphemy, as guaranteed by its 1992 constitution. Despite an overwhelmingly Christian population and a steadily growing Muslim minority, Ghana remains one of the few African states whose political order is firmly and consistently secular, with no entrenched alignment between ethnic identity and religious affiliation. Its criminal code contains only a single relevant provision, Section 207 which prohibits “insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace,” and even this is classified merely as a misdemeanour. Socially, however, the terrain is far from neutral: the country is a centre of vigorous evangelical activity and hosts some of the largest Jehovah’s Witness and Latter-day Saint congregations on the continent. The stakes for such a billboard are likely to be far higher elsewhere in West Africa. As Jeffrey Haynes at Observatoire International Du Religieux notes, “Ghana is not however the norm. On the one hand, there is a de facto African consensus that incitement to violence – including in relation to those accused of blasphemy or apostasy – calls for state protection of those threatened. On the other hand, state policies towards incitement to discrimination do not always support this aim; across the region, they vary markedly. In Africa, various freedoms – including of opinion, expression, and freedom of religion or belief – are often rather intricately intertwined; violations against one often lead to abuses against another”.
A prominent illustration of the risks faced by openly irreligious individuals in the region is the case of Mubarak Bala of Kano State, Nigeria. Bala, a chemical engineer from a well-known family of Islamic scholars, publicly identified as an atheist in 2014 after becoming disillusioned by the rise of Islamist violence and increasing conservatism in northern Nigeria. His declaration was followed by his confinement in a psychiatric institution on the charge of “denying the biblical account of Adam and Eve”. He remained there for eighteen days and later reported being subjected to beatings and threats. His release was ultimately secured through the intervention of Humanists International and several medical professionals.
In 2020, Bala was appointed the president of the Humanists Association of Nigeria, however this only intensified his troubles. After sharing criticism of the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad on Facebook in April 2022, he was arrested for blasphemy. Fearing death, he reached out to Nigerian secular activist Leo Igwe, who works to support those accused of witchcraft navigate the legal process. Igwe worked alongside numerous secular organisations, including the Atheist Alliance International and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, pressed the Nigerian government for Bala’s release. Yet, after a two-year long legal battle, Bala was sentenced to 24 years in prison, one year for each of the 24 charges brought against him. Following sustained pressure from European governments and continued campaigns by Humanists International intensified, Bala was released in late 2024. He went into hiding in Lagos before relocating to Bavaria, Germany, with assistance from the German government and a fellowship through Humanist Society’s Shelter Program.
Mubarak Bala’s ordeal is only one instance among many across West Africa, though it is one of the few to have drawn sustained international notice. His case lays bare the social coercion and persistent risks of imprisonment—or worse—that atheists and the irreligious routinely confront throughout the region. In such a landscape of entrenched and often unexamined constraints on freedom of conscience, the FFRF billboard in Accra offers, however modestly, a point of visibility and a token of possibility in what remains for many an otherwise untenable existence.
Image courtesy of Muntaka Chasant via Wikimedia Commons, ©2019. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
