- The Observer,
- Sunday November 24, 2002
Sharia has been declared in only twelve of the Nigerian Federation's 31 states, since its introduction in Zamfara state in early 2000. But because the 12 northern states tend to form a solid bloc of votes - without which Obasanjo cannot hope to win re-election next year - he is seen by many Nigerians as having failed to provide the powerful leadership needed to defeat the application of Sharia law.
Obasanjo's Federal Minister of Justice has written to the Sharia states to tell them that Sharia is illegal and that the constitution of Nigeria makes the country a secular state. But the states have taken no notice whatsoever of the Minister's legal opinion. Obasanjo's own statements on the subject have been treated with equal disdain, as coming from a 'toothless bulldog'.
These harsh views arise from the fact that, although Sharia is supposed to govern only the lives of Muslims who live in the Sharia states, it in fact affects Christians and those who adhere to Nigerian indigenous religions, as well.
For instance, some of the Sharia states forbid men and women to use the same public transport. If a Christian and his wife who live in the north are travelling by bus they must travel separately. Christians regard this as an imposition of the highest order, but they can do nothing about it.
Drinking alcohol in hotels and restaurants is also frowned upon in the Sharia states. In Zamfara, the first state to declare Sharia, the Governor, Ahmed Sani, went to the extent of paying unmarried women $250 dollars each from state funds, to prevent them from resorting to prostitution. Women are no longer allowed to play football in the state and girls and boys have been separated into single-sex schools.
Sharia, in effect, makes some Nigerians more free than others. In Nigeria the Federal Court has to confirm a sentence of death but in the north, such cases are routinely referred to the lowest Sharia courts, which do not hesitate to impose the death penalty.
This is what happened to 30-year-old Amina Lawal. She was sentenced to be stoned to death by a Sharia court on 22 March this year at Bakori, in Katsina State, for having had a baby outside marriage. The sentence was due to be carried out once she had weaned her daughter.
Amina's appeal to a higher Sharia court at Funtua, also in Katsina State, was dismissed on 19 August. She has now lodged another appeal with the Sharia Court of Appeal in Kaduna. If that also fails, she can appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court. In the unlikely event that both these courts will uphold her death sentence, she could still be reprieved by Obasanjo.
When the news of Amina's sentencing first broke a campaign was launched on her behalf. This in turn led to some of the Miss World contestants refusing to go to Nigeria and attracted adverse publicity in the north to the event.
The outside world was right to be concerned about Amina's life, for in January this year a man sentenced to death by a Sharia court for murder was hanged in Kaduna prison. There was no appeal to the federal courts and the federal ministry of justice did not intervene. With no confirmation from the Presidential office as to whether the execution was sanctioned the possibility remains that it might have been carried out unlawfully by the Kaduna state authorities.
Safiya Husaini, a mother of five, was more fortunate - her sentence to death for adultery was quashed by a Sharia court in Sokoto. Others are not so lucky. The Sharia courts routinely sentence prisoners to amputation of limbs and flogging. Yet such punishments are in direct defiance of the Nigerian constitution, which forbids 'cruel and inhuman punishment'.
As a result of the government's failure to protect the human rights of its citizens in the north, rioting has increased in the northern states during the past two years.
The worst of them occurred in Kaduna in February 2000 when approximately 3,000 people were killed as Christians and Muslims battled it out for over a week. Churches and mosques were torched, and hotels and restaurants razed to the ground. By the time peace was restored by the army and the police, Kaduna resembled a war zone.
Since then, there have been riots in almost every Sharia state, sometimes with 'retaliatory' riots also occurring in the south centred around Lagos and the eastern states of Nigeria, whose 'citizens' in the north are often the main targets of attacks by northern Islamic fanatics.
Yet, religion alone is not enough to explain the brutal strength which marks these periodic Nigerian conflagrations. Many people in the south believe that the north has a political agenda and wishes to rule the entire country.
They argue that when its political expectations are ignored, the north resorts to religious violence to try and impose its will. Since the country's oil wealth - on which it depends for 90 percent of its revenue - is produced in the south, this makes for an uneasy relationship between the two areas.
Adding to this tension, many southerners feel that the 'arid' north is taking advantage of the political situation in Nigeria, created by the British Empire. In the early twentieth century Lord Lugard, on behalf of Britain, incorporated a variety of ethnic groups into the modern state - this situation, which sees people, many distrusting of each other, forced to live side by side, has only helped to inflame an already volatile scenario.
With a southerner, President Obasanjo, in power, southern resentment is currently somewhat muted. But if the current riots and subsequent events were to make it impossible for a southerner to be elected, the situation could become increasingly dangerous.
Northerners, however, argue that without their assistance, Obasanjo would not have been elected. They claim that he was rejected by his own 'native' states in the south-western part of the country.
The situation in Nigeria is still finely balanced. With feelings running high logic is a rare commodity and there is currently no sign that either side will listen to the other.
For the sake of the country's 120 million people, it is to be hoped that the events surrounding the cancellation of the Miss World contest will concentrate minds more closely around Nigeria's future. If that happens, then Miss World, surprising as it might seem, will have done the country a favour.
