Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, said he condemned Deborah Samuel’s murder because it contradicted Islam’s tenets. 

Mr Abubakar, while appearing on Channels TV’s presidential town hall series, addressed the controversy that followed the deletion of his tweet, which condemned the gruesome killing of Ms Samuel, a student of the Sokoto State College of Education stoned and burnt alive by extremist mobs for allegedly blackmailing Prophet Mohammed. 

Mr Abubakar pulled down the tweet after several northern fanatics said his position would cost him his presidential bid. 

However, speaking on Sunday, Mr Abubakar said he condemned the killing because it contravened due process as stipulated by Islamic statutes. 

“There is nowhere it is said, or it is an injunction in the Islamic faith that you can go and take somebody’s life, nowhere, it has to be through due process,” said the PDP presidential standard-bearer. 

The former vice president further prided himself as not afraid to take unpopular stands on issues saying that he did not originally authorise the tweet that condemned late Ms Samuel’s murder. 

“I asked the tweet to be deleted because I normally approve every tweet. So, since I didn’t approve it, I said, ‘delete it’. If you read my subsequent statements on that murder, I condemned it,” he said.