Nigeria, May 24 -- In a democracy, the voice of the people is sacred, a right guaranteed, not granted, by those in power. Yet, the unfolding ordeal of 18-year-old Hamdiyya Shariff in Sokoto State tells a chilling story of how power, when unchecked, becomes a tool of persecution.

Hamdiyya, a teenager with nothing but her voice and conscience, dared to speak about the insecurity and suffering of internally displaced persons in her community - a truth visible to everyone yet denied by those responsible. For that act of courage, she has been relentlessly pursued, arrested, brutalized, tried in a Sharia court, and now reportedly abducted and found unconscious in Zamfara State. And all this - not for stealing, not for inciting violence - but f...