A mainly Muslim state in northern Nigeria has pronounced a "fatwa" on the author of an article about the Miss World pageant that was seen as insulting to the Prophet Mohammed.
Zamfara State's information commissioner, Mr Umar Dangaladima, told reporters that the state government endorsed a "fatwa" - an Islamic religious decree - calling for the death of fashion writer Ms Isioma Daniel, whose report triggered bloody riots.
There is no danger that the decree will be carried out - Daniel lives far from Zamfara in Lagos and is said to have fled Nigeria - but the statement marks another dispute between the leaders of the Muslim north and Nigeria's secular government.
Information Minister Mr Jerry Gana, who acts as a spokesman for Nigeria's secular government, dismissed the decree as both "null and void" and unconstitutional and vowed it would not be enforced.
"The federal government under the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will not allow such an order in any part of the federal republic," he told reporters.
Last week more than 220 people died in the northern city of Kaduna in rioting, which has been blamed on the report, and the Miss World organisation was been forced to abandon plans to stage the spectacle in Nigeria.
Mr Dangaladima told reporters: "The state government did not on its own pass the fatwa. It's a fact that Islam prescribes the death penalty on anybody, no matter his faith, who insults the Prophet. "Therefore the state government has retained this verdict as it applies to Isioma. This is our position," he said, explaining that Islamic youth organisations had come to the Zamfara government to ask for action against the offending journalist.
Zamfara's deputy governor Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi said late Monday in a speech to religious leaders in the Zamfara State capital Gusau which was rebroadcast on state radio: "Like Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed."
Ms Daniel is understood to be in hiding in the US.
She resigned from the newspaper This Day after fury erupted over an article she authored on November 16th on the Miss World pageant, in which she suggested that the Prophet Mohammed might not have opposed its being held in Nigeria.
"The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria to ask them to revel in vanity. What would Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them," she wrote.
Ms Daniel is described by her paper as "a style writer who had only just joined This Day a few months back after a short journalism career in the UK".