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The Shari'ah Conundrum in Nigeria and the Zamfara Model: The Role of Nigerian Muslim Youth in the Historical Context Online Publication Date: 01 April 2007 To cite this Article: Sanni, Amidu , (2007) 'The Shari'ah Conundrum in Nigeria and the Zamfara Model: The Role of Nigerian Muslim Youth in the Historical Context', Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27:1, 117 - 132 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/13602000701308913 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602000701308913
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Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 1, April 2007
The Shari’ah Conundrum in Nigeria and the Zamfara Model: The Role of Nigerian Muslim Youth in the Historical Context
AMIDU SANNI Abstract One of the outstanding issues in contemporary Islamist revivalism in sub-Saharan Africa is constitutional reform which will ensure the re-enactment of the shari’ah as a main, if not the main, legal system in countries with Muslim majority or where Muslims constitute a sizeable minority. Although shari’ah had always had a restricted sphere of operation, especially in Islamic societies where colonialism had often deprived it of jurisdiction on areas other than family law and religious endowments,1 agitations for its full entrenchment have, like flickering flames poked from dying embers in a grate, always surfaced under new political dispensations. Admittedly, ethnic divisions have always undermined the unity and sovereignty of Nigeria,2 but such divisions and suspicions are often suppressed by stronger factors such as religion. Until 1999, the penal aspect of the shari’ah was all but suspended in Nigeria. But on 21 January 2000, the governor of Zamfara State (North Eastern Nigeria) reintroduced this aspect, and since then, most of the northern Nigerian states, and to a certain extent, some areas in Yorubaland (south-west Nigeria), have equally tried their hands at it. This paper will examine the history of the Islamic legal system in Nigeria and the efforts of the Nigerian youth in promoting or opposing its application and sustenance as a veritable tool for solving contemporary political, social, and economic problems bedeviling the nation. Introduction The issue of implementing shari’ah is almost as old as the introduction of Islam to sub-Saharan Africa in the eleventh century.3 But the internal elaboration of this legal system took place from the fifteenth century onwards at the instance of local rulers who, having embraced Islam, sought to transform all aspects of governance in line with the shari’ah.4 For instance, the rulers of Kano and Katsina started to request an elaborate mechanism of shari’ah application. Al-Maghili, who was at various times in Kano, Borno, and Katsina, wrote in 1491, at the instance of Sultan Muhammad Rumfa of Kano (r.1463 –1499), a manual on state administration; so too did al-Suyuti (d.1506) for the chief of Katsina.5 Al-Maghili was a remarkable figure in the character and diffusion of shari’ah system, as his ideas were quite influential even with the leaders of the nineteenth century Islamic revolution, otherwise called the “jihadist period,” in Hausaland.6 The Sokoto jihadists, according to Allan Christelow, promoted Islamic law not by the sword but by the written and the oral word in which the shari’ah was discussed in relation to issues and events that were familiar to their immediate audience.7 The parallels between the decadent, corrupt political and religious dispensations against which Usman dan Fodio (1754 –1817) and his disciples fought, and the legacies ISSN 1360-2004 print/ISSN 1469-9591 online/07/010117-16 # 2007 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs DOI: 10.1080/13602000701308913
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of the successive Nigerian political and religious establishments since independence are often proposed as the key impulse for the recrudescence of zeal among contemporary youthful Nigerian Muslims for the full application of shari’ah in all matters. To this I intend to return later. With the defeat of the king of Gobir in 1808 and the subsequent conquest of other Hausa states, the stage was set for the full Islamization of administrative and judicial mechanisms based on shari’ah provisions. The trio of Usman, his brother Abdullah (1766–1829), and son Muhammad Bello (1781 –1837) established what can reasonably be called “the shari’ah caliphate” which subsisted until the advent of colonialism. In other words, only shari’ah law was in use as long as the caliphate lasted; the qadi courts adjudicated personal, civil, and criminal matters. The British explorer, Clapperton, who visited the area early in the nineteenth century, observed that the Islamic law was strictly in force so much “that the whole country when not in a state of war, was so well-regulated that it is a common saying that a woman might travel with a casket of gold upon her head from one end of the Fellata dominions to the other.”8 The British colonial rule in Nigeria (1900–1960) witnessed a progressive freeze in the authority of the Sultan and emirs, the erstwhile custodians of the shari’ah tradition in the north, and, consequently, a whittling down of its sphere of adjudication.9 The British colonial Protectorate over the north in 1900 came “at a time when the Islamic law in that region was still near its highest degree of practical application.”10 But under section 20 of the Supreme Court Ordinance of 1900, the shari’ah was deprived of its absolute power on civil, criminal, and even certain aspects of family matters in deference to colonial administrative exigencies and in response to the heterogeneity of the religious and ethnic composition of the north, understood as comprising three zones: namely, Muslims, Christians, and pagans.11 The system of indirect rule as practiced by Lord Lugard introduced the British law while at the same time allowed the judicial system already in place under the caliphate to function under the terms and oversight of the representatives of the “Crown”. So two judicial systems existed in British Northern Nigeria: the English law, and the Alkali Courts which were run by experts in the shari’ah and the palace courts, or rather the Emir’s judicial Council. Lugard was, however, able to obtain concessions from the custodians of the shari’ah with regard to prohibition of slavery, amputation of thieves, stoning of an adulterer, and the law of retribution.12 Shari’ah in Operation: 1900 –1966 The Native Court Proclamation of 1900, which drew on the shari’ah tradition as overlaid by formalized native norms and conventions, operated side by side with the British Law that was being introduced. Up till independence in 1960, the shari’ah was more widely used in personal, civil, and criminal cases and perhaps more rigidly too in Northern Nigeria than anywhere else outside Arabia.13 But then there was no lack of intervention by the colonialists, even in such penal laws as had been allowed to be administered by the Native Courts. For example, in 1933 the British took action to restrict lapidation in response to a man who had been flogged at Bukuru-Jos for tax evasion. Although lashing continued as punishment for alcoholism, adultery, and false accusation of adultery.14 The first Muslim Court of Appeal (later Shari’a Court of Appeal), to which all civil and criminal cases decided in native courts under Islamic law were to be referred, was created by the British in 1956.15 The informal stratification of the north by the colonial administration based on fealty to the three religious systems—Islam, Christianity, and
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traditional religion—had both positive and negative implications. Of the former was the deference to the sensibility of the Muslim majority through the exclusion of evangelical missionaries from Muslim towns, a measure that kept a lid on any potential conflict between Muslims and Christians. Also, in the south, the sponsorship of separate schools for Muslims by the colonial administration, Lagos 1896, Badagry 1898, Epe 1899, assuaged the agitation and apprehension of the Muslims in regard to Christian domination as long as Western subjects were taught here alongside the Islamic sciences.16
Shari’ah in South-West Nigeria Among the Yoruba of south-western Nigeria where Muslims are in a reasonable majority, shari’ah has a relatively shorter root in history. Before the colonial period, Islamic law, particularly the one related to personal law, was administered informally by the local scholars to those who sought it. The indigenous legal module based on tradition still held sway, and the emergence of the British legal system neither removed the native system nor promoted the establishment of state-sponsored Islamic legal structures.17 The Native Council Ordinance of 1901 gave legal support to native courts which were required to administer justice according to native law and customs.18 The Customary law, of course, includes Muslim law as modified by the customs of each locality.19 But already before this Ordinance came into force, whatever sphere of operation that was available to shari’ah and its operators was being eroded by the colonialist’s delimitation. For example, addressing an assembly that included the Awujale of Ijebu, chiefs and other peoples on 27 February 1899, Acting Governor G. C. Denton argued that the native laws which were applicable to Muslims, Christians and the pagans alike, were to be administered only by the Awujale and his chiefs.20 By and large, the application of the shari’ah remained low keyed and was determined by individual rather than communal demands. But once we had Muslim rulers in parts of the Yoruba country from the midnineteenth century, for example, Abibu Lagunju (1847–1900) at Ede, Lamuye (1858– 1906) at Iwo, the scope and prominence of the shari’ah became enhanced so much that aspects of its penal code, for example the public execution of robbers, was administered.21 From then onward, the strength of the clamor for shari’ah in Yorubaland can be assessed from the tone of a petition by some Muslims to the colonial governor of Lagos on 10 July 1894. The petition requested for the recognition of marriages conducted, and of children born, under Islamic rites. The petition also demanded that the property of deceased Muslims be shared among heirs in accordance with the Muslim law and practice.22 About half a century later, the Muslim Congress of Nigeria (founded in 1948 by Muhammad al-Amin Kudaisi with headquarters at Ijebu Ode) wrote to the Secretary of the colonial administration, complaining about the application of laws repugnant to the faith of Southern Nigerian Muslims. Of particular concern to the Muslims was that the judge followed whatever procedure he wished in the administration of inheritance without regard to clear Islamic provisions in this matter.23 One piece of evidence that may prove that the application of shari’ah was not after all banned in Yorubaland by the colonialists, as Mahmud seems to be suggesting, is that in 1935 leaders of the Anglican Church complained that mere payment of the bride price by adulterers was too light a punishment. Hitherto, the house or village of the offender was burned. In response, the British prescribed measures to limit the physical impact of lapidation, and this was eventually codified in the hadd (mandatory criminal sanction) ˙ lashing ordinance of July 1960, or to allow the substitution of a cash payment.24
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The Youth in Contest The Amalgamation in 1914 of the south and the north to form what is now Nigeria was followed by a coordinated pursuit of common causes by Nigerians, and these necessarily entailed socio-political and religious matters. Improved transportation networks by roads and rail, the introduction of telecommunication facilities, greater mobility through trade, migration, pilgrimage, and education all fostered closer interaction across the geographical divide. From as early as the second quarter of the twentieth century, the Nigerian youths, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, worked towards the political and social liberation of the country. For example, the first Nigerian Muslim lawyer, Lawal Basil Agusto (1886–1971) attempted, albeit not too successfully, to establish a Muslim school at his house in 1916, as there was only one Muslim government primary school in the south until 1912.25 At the national level, the Youth Conferences of 1938 and 1940 had called for the abolition of indirect rule.26 But since independence in 1960, Muslims in various parts of Nigeria have become more remarkably linked together than hitherto, and this was largely achieved through the efforts of the youths. For example, the Muslim Students’ Society (MSS) which was founded in 1954 at Lagos with its operational base moving to Ibadan two years later, was able to hold its national conference in 1964 at Ilorin, the first time in a gateway city to the north and, having evolved from a school-based association to a national body with branches in higher institutions in the north, got in September 1969 an Hausa student from Abdullahi Bayero College (now Bayero University) Kano as the first non-Yoruba President of the Society.27 The success story of the MSS in national integration also stimulated the convocation in 1968 of the Conference of Muslim Lecturers and Administrative Staff of Nigerian Universities. Among the offshoots of the MSS were the Muslim Corpers’ Association of Nigeria and the Federation of Muslim Graduates Association. The 1966 incursion of the military into the nascent political system heralded the beginning of a process that produced a more assertive, radicalized youthful generation. Starting with the 1961 robust post-independence opposition to a military pact with Britain, the erstwhile colonial authority, the Nigerian youth, and indeed the Nigerian Muslim youth started to respond in a sustained and articulate fashion to local and international issues. The Palestinian issue became a focal point of international solidarity, as Israel came to be regarded as the beˆte noire of the Muslim world. By the beginning of the 1970s there had been muted agitations for the enhancement of the status of shari’ah and indeed the restoration of its sphere of application to what it used to be in the pre-colonial north. After the overthrow of General Gowon in 1975, the successor junta indicated its preparedness to foster a new democracy with a new constitution. This provided the impulse for a coordinated and passionate demand for a broader shari’ah regime. There was the great debate on whether constitutional provisions should be made for the institution of a Federal Sharia Court of Appeal and for the creation of shari’ah courts in the south, especially where there are large Muslim populations. United in the pursuit of this objective were the Muslim intelligentsia and youth groups from the north and south, some of whom even declared their readiness to take up arms if necessary.28 At the end of it all, the 1979 Federal Constitution provided for the first time, for Sharia and or Customary Courts of Appeal, “for any state that requires it.” The internal disagreements among various Muslim groups often recede to the backburner, and the challenge of the southern Muslims to the assumed hereditary leadership of their northern brethren is usually suppressed while the pursuit of common agenda lasts. It may be said in parenthesis that there have always been conscious and sustained
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attempts at fostering unity not only among adherents of rival Sufi sodalities, but also among the southern and northern Muslims. For example, the founding of the Jamaatu Nasril Islam in 1962 by Ahmadu Bello (1908– 1966) had the former as one of its objectives, and the fact that the setting up of its secretariat was entrusted to Labaika Bello, a Yoruba Muslim from Ilorin who was then the General Secretary of Ansarul Islam Society,29 is a clear example of the latter. But the effort at a closer integration found a more eloquent expression in the convocation by Ahmadu Bello in 1966 of the first All Nigeria Muslim Conference in Kaduna in which Muslim organizations from all the political regions of Nigeria participated.30 Shari’ah: An Instrument of Peace and War Religious tensions that frequently, if not regularly, lead to bloody violence between Muslims and Christians have become part of the Nigerian scene over the last two decades.31 It should be stated that issues not directly related to shari’ah often provoked clashes that were ultimately attributed to the shari’ah discourse. Among such were the bloody encounters that took place in September 2006 following on the expression of insulting words on the person of the Prophet Muhammad by a Christian woman at a market place in Dutse, capital of Jigawa State. A similar clash had earlier been provoked at Kaduna on Saturday 3 April 2004. A young Christian evangelist was reported to have defiled a copy of the Qur’an in response to which some Muslims reacted sharply. When the dust settled, several churches and mosques had been burned. It is, however, apposite to remark that shari’ah has, since independence, evolved as the main causus belli between the Muslims and political establishments on the one hand, and the Muslims and Christians on the other. The strongest opposition to the shari’ah debate understandably came from the Christians, some of whose spokespersons saw it as a covert attempt to Islamize Nigeria and a way of “forcing people to become Muslim.”32 The negative response by the Christians was informed in part by their belief that the Muslims were making excessive demands from the system. Hence their antagonism was underlined by a fear and defiance that frequently led to violent resistance.33 This apprehension was certainly unfounded, as the Islamic legal system in theory and in practice has historically guaranteed the rights of non-Muslims.34 Even when the Islamic legal system was dominant, no attempt was made to transform northern Nigeria wholesale in conformity with the shari’ah, and it is not true, as claimed by Wan-Tatah, that there was a forced conversion of Christians and pagans to the Islamic faith or imposition of its legal system once the Jihad of Dan Fodio was successful.35 But opposition to shari’ah was not limited to the Christians; there was no lack of inaudible and, at times, loud voices of rejection from some penumbra of Muslims. For example, the Muslim Committee for a Progressive Nigeria (MCPN), a leftist group, supported the anti-shari’ah campaign and described the legal system as “the most backward Muslim religious, legal, and customary instruments in the hands of the minority feudal emirs for keeping the majority of the poor and oppressed peasants and workers down.”36 Nevertheless, there was no lack of understanding, if not a measured support, from some Christians who argued that Islam made no distinction between the spiritual and the mundane, nor between the mosque and the court, hence its law, the shari’ah, encompasses the sacred and the profane.37 The support of the non-Muslims, particularly the Christians, was to become of greater political and social significance once the campaign for the “globalization” of shari’ah in Nigeria re-emerged following the bold initiative of Zamfara State in January 2000. This shall be discussed later in greater detail.
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The involvement of the Yoruba Muslims in the campaign for shari’ah received a boost in the 1970s with the involvement of the influential multi-millionaire politician Chief Moshood K. O. Abiola (d.1998). With a virile media outlet, The National Concord, which started publication in 1980, Abiola became a strong advocate for shari’ah and by 1984 his newspaper group was passionately campaigning for Sharia Court of Appeal in Yorubaland. Abiola also sponsored a National Sharia Committee that was charged with the sensitization of the Muslims and the mobilization of support for the institutionalization of shari’ah as a national judicial system. In October 1984 he funded a national conference on shari’ah at the University of Lagos.38 The choice of a university for such an event was not coincidental, Muslim intellectuals and indeed the active Muslim student groups have all along lubricated the machinery that was put in place for the shari’ah agenda. The political motive of Abiola for supporting shari’ah is difficult to deny, but it is all the more difficult to gauge. On the basis of the foregoing, it is incorrect, as Christelow proposes, that the northern politicians’ hopes of generating Yoruba Muslim support for the shari’ah was misplaced, as “loyalty to the ancestral city takes precedence for the Yoruba over loyalty to religion.”39 The Council of Muslim Youth Organizations (COMYO), an umbrella body for all youth associations in Oyo State in south-west Nigeria came into existence by the end of the 1970s and was particularly active in the call for respect for the fundamental rights of the Muslims, including the right of Muslim children to religious instruction in public schools. The composite associations in COMYO individually and collectively were spectacularly active in the shari’ah debate that spanned the latter half of the 1970s till the early 1980s.40 However, a youth camp held at Ilorin in 1987 under the auspices of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) with participants from Southern Nigeria and the north transformed this organization into the National Council of Muslim Youth Organizations (NACOMYO).41
The Radicalization of Youth: Internal and External Stimuli One major event that significantly altered the pace and tenor of Muslim agitation for shari’ah, and indeed for Islam as a political system, was the Iranian revolution of February 1979.42 Its appeal to the Nigerian activist derived, first from not being part of Arab Islam; and its remarkable success offered an additional impetus to the swelling ground of radicalism in the “jihad” for shari’ah. The MSS in the north became more militant. With Ibrahim Zak Zaky of the Ahmadu Bello University, and Aminud-Din Abubakar of Bayero University, an ultra-radical dimension was introduced to the shari’ah debate. Zak Zaky and his ilk were critical of the Muslim leaders whose fealty to Islam was even questioned, and on 4 and 20 August 1980, Zak Zaky led the first public demonstrations outside the university campus as an expression of rejection for the 1979 national Constitution and as a launching pad for a more robust campaign for the recognition of shari’ah as a national law.43 Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi is yet another factor in the radicalization of the Nigerian Muslim youth. His anti-imperialist, indeed anti-Western rhetoric, occasional economic and political support for African issues, moderating influence on rival religious interests and groups, all contributed to the idealization of the Libyan paradigm. Besides, Qadhafi’s employment of some of his politically tainted institutions made his model a point of reference. For example, the Islamic Call Society, although not explicitly stated to be a counterforce to similar international organizations, for example the Saudi-financed
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Muslim World League (founded 1962), is largely intended to influence the Islamic societies in the developing countries and to “promote the adoption of Islamic law.”44 On 21 January 2000, Ahmed Sani Yerima, the governor of Zamfara, one of the northern Nigerian states, signed into law a bill establishing the penal aspect of the shari’ah for the state, prohibiting prostitution, gambling, and the sale, purchase, and consumption of alcohol (A Law to Establish a Sharia Penal Code for Zamfara State, Law No. 10, 2000; 27 January 2000).45 Thereafter, movie houses, brothels, and liquor houses were shut down, lapidation was administered for consuming alcoholic beverage and illicit sex with unmarried women. Following on this was the establishment of a Zakat Board on 4 February 2000, which gave N25,000 (about US$180) each to 27 former prostitutes who were being rehabilitated. The grant was to assist them to start decent businesses. The 1999 Constitution, which is the current operational political document in Nigeria, is the principal instrument of legitimization and de-legitimization that is employed by the proponents and the opponents of shari’ah. The latter anchors the strength of their argument largely on Chapter IV which deals with specific rights of all Nigerians. The full implementation of shari’ah, they argue, will undermine these rights. The proponents cite Chapter VII, the Judicature, as putting the seal of legitimacy on the shari’ah institution. Section 260 here recognizes the Sharia Court of Appeal to be located at the Federal Capital Territory; section 262 highlights its jurisdiction and duties, while section 275 guarantees any state the right to establish a Sharia Court of Appeal if and when it so desires. But the argument in support of the full introduction of shari’ah was based on the provisions of Chapter I, Pt II, Section 4, articles 6 and 7 which grant the legislature, namely, the House of Assembly of a state, the right to make laws for the state or any part thereof. And once this organ of government approves the proposal for the shari’ah it becomes binding on the state. So the constitutionality of shari’ah was not in doubt, although it involves questions of extent rather than legitimacy, even if discordant views were expressed by government spokespersons.46 This is reflective of the familiar character of political regulators of public opinions in Africa who often discountenance their own heritage and realism in their blind attempt to fall in line with Western models.47 Whereas the spirit and letter of the Nigerian constitution embraces pluralism of faith, which by extension includes faith-based legal systems, officials who argued against its legitimacy often proffered the concept of secularism as understood in the West. The familiar Christian response to shari’ah already demonstrated in the 1970s again came to light, this time with greater vigor after the Zamfara revolution, and it is the exceedingly violent dimensions that it has assumed that brought to the fore the role of the youth in the prevention, generation and sacralization of conflict and violence in the name of religious ideas or institutions. This phenomenon requires a more detailed investigation than the present study can accommodate, and I hope to make it the subject of an independent inquiry at a later date.48 Nevertheless, it may be observed that the slightest disagreement over the shari’ah had become enough a powerful spark to kindle layers of disillusionment, dissent, and frustration with the political and economic arrangements that had been in place since independence, so much that the resultant disorder has always been of unimaginable proportion, whether it be of religious character, as between Muslims and Christians, or between or across ethnic or social groups. The Jamaat Nasril Islam was quick to react to the new wave of shari’ah activism, not only by sensitizing the Nigerian Muslims at large, but also by preparing the ground for a robust and intellectual response to the expected opposition this new development was
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bound to generate from non-Muslims, especially the Christians. So it convened a national conference in Kaduna between 9 and 11 February 2000. Reactions against the enforcement of shari’ah ranged from verbal animadversions to violent conflicts. Even before shari’ah became operational in Zamfara, Dr. Sunday Mbang, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN, founded 1975) had on Thursday 4 November 1999, launched a vociferous attack on the Muslims and shari’ah and poured venom on the person of Ahmed Sani for making shari’ah a key campaign program when he was a candidate for governor in March 1999.49 A churchwoman, Rev. Bola Odeleke, described the shari’ah as an “evil” that must be exorcized from the Nigerian body system.50 Rev. Adeola Abiola, the Lagos State Chairman of CAN was widely reported both in print and electronic media as threatening a breakdown of peace and order, just a day after the shari’ah bill came into force in Zamfara. The last week of February 2000 witnessed the loss of several lives and destruction of properties arising from the bloody conflict between Muslims and Christians in Kaduna as the proposal for the introduction of shari’ah to the state was just being put forward. But like the first shari’ah debate of the 1970s, there was no shortage of support from some penumbra of Christians. One Rev. Oloto from Ibadan could not see any reason for opposition. If the Islamic legal system would solve the socio-economic malaise of the country, he argued, why can’t we go for it? After all, it had never affected the Christians adversely nor was there any prospect of it affecting them when fully introduced all over the country. He argued that the objection smacks of antinomian trends which have found proponents among the promoters of moral and social inequities which the Zamfara model has set out to correct.51 A similar support for the shari’ah was expressed by one Senator Danladi Bameyi, a Christian aspirant for the governorship of Kebbi State. He even went further to promise better facilities and infrastructure for the legal system which he said had never affected any Christian in the first instance as to warrant the kind of resistance some Christians were putting up.52 Worthy of mention is the Western support for campaigners against the shari’ah, an act that further reinforces the Muslims’ stereotype of the West as the successor and promoter of the Crusader’s mentality that was bent on underpinning the Christian cause, destroying all institutions and traces of Muslim civilization, and associating any campaign for the validation of Islamic values as another manifestation of the agenda of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.53 The shari’ah is often portrayed as being outmoded. According to Professor Noibi, the question of the Islamic law being archaic or out of tune with modern realities and demands is out of question, since it was divinely authored.54 The Western media was unrelenting in its negative criticisms of the shari’ah, while political and organizational institutions identified passionately with anti- shari’ah forces, especially those with some affiliation to Islam.55 For example, the 2002 Canadian John Humphrey Freedom Award for Human Rights (US$25,000) was awarded to Ayesha Imam of the Baobab for Women’s Human Rights, an NGO. She is an anti-shari’ah activist from Northern Nigeria. According to her, many of the penal prescriptions attributed to shari’ah, for example, stoning of adulterer/adulteress to death, is neither in the Qur’an, nor in Islam.56 Specific Cases and their Fallout The true test of the commitment of advocates of the shari’ah came with implementation. On 22 March 2000, Malam Buba Bello Jangeli’s right hand was amputated in Gusau, capital of Zamfara State for stealing a cow, thus becoming the first to bear the full
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weight of the penal aspect of shari’ah as re-launched in Northern Nigeria. The event provoked a plethora of bitter reactions from Christians and elicited the outrage of a crosssection of the raucous press and civil rights groups within and outside Nigeria. Besides, it raised questions in legal morality: why should a cow thief’s right hand be amputated while looters of treasuries are not so punished? Whatever its inherent and initial imperfections, the zeal for shari’ah across Nigeria, particularly in the north, became infectious, such that not less than two-thirds of the 19 northern states were, by 2004, already committed by legislation and implementation to the penal aspect of the shari’ah. In Sokoto State, for example, Safiya Husayn was accused of adultery and for bearing a child out of wedlock, for which she was to be stoned to death. On 27 March 2002, when the court was to pronounce its verdict, the court room was filled by local and foreign attendees. Interestingly, a day before this a Muslim member of the Lagos State House of Assembly sponsored a resolution that was adopted, to the effect that the penal aspects of the shari’ah be jettisoned by the “shari’ah states.” The bifurcation of Nigeria into shari’ah and non-shari’ah states is of both political and religious significance, as it has some underlining assumptions. On 26 March 2002, in Katsina State, Amina Lawal was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery; the punishment was to be carried out after she delivered her baby, Wasila. The furor generated by this was quite extensive, so much that President Obasanjo found space for it in his Independence broadcast of 1 October 2002. It has never happened, said he and, with some brittle optimism, averred that it may never happen. His Foreign Affairs Minister could not but give a more reassuring statement at a world press conference on 29 October 2002, as Nigeria prepared for the Miss World pageant of 7 December 2002. The event was never to be for two major reasons: the boycott by many of the prospective participants who made the nullification of the sentence on Safiya a precondition for participation, and the fallout from the bloody clashes in Kaduna on 20–25 November 2002. This followed the publication in This Day, a local tabloid, of what the Muslims considered extremely offensive to Islam and the person of the Prophet Muhammad in regard to the planned Miss World show. It may be said that the campaign against stoning to death as a punishment for adultery assumed some international dimension; 11 female Muslim members of the Iranian Parliament started a protest in this regard on 13 December 2002, although there is no evidence that this was in response to the Nigerian situation. Records from the northern states where shari’ah is being implemented indicate that as of 25 September 2003, when the appeal of Amina Lawal was heard and upheld to the joy and ecstasy of the world, five people have been sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery, although none is yet to be so killed.57 But, on the same day that the case was being reviewed by the five-man panel of the Sharia Court of Appeal, 20 year old Jibril Babaji was sentenced to death by stoning for engaging in homosexual relations with three teenagers, while another man, who wrote a love letter to a married woman, was given 30 lashes and his female partner given 20 strokes. Apart from Jangeli, the right hand of one Lawal Isa from Gumi village, also in Zamfara, was also amputated on 17 December 2002, for stealing a bicycle, and as of that date, 12 convicted thieves are reported to be awaiting amputation of their right hands in Sokoto State.58 A news report of Saturday 25 January 2003, indicated that the right hand of one Sulaiman who was convicted for stealing electronics at Gusau, Zamfara State, was also slated for amputation.59 On this same day, the national TV network, NTA, showed the visual footage of one Amina Maidoya, mother of a set of twins, whose right leg had been amputated by her husband on charges of infidelity. But some days earlier, precisely on 5 January, a judge of the Upper Area Court in Bauchi, Malam Yerima,
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had ruled that the right leg of her husband, Husain Maidoya, be amputated, too, in line with shari’ah provision.60 In the shari’ah states altogether, three convicted thieves have had their right hands amputated since 2000, the third for stealing a goat. In November 2003, Dr. Maccido Ibrahim, the Grand Khadi of Kaduna, disclosed that the hands of two convicted thieves will be amputated if the judgment was confirmed by the governor, Makarfi. But then a three-man panel of judges was put in place to “study” the judgment.61 As a prelude to the commencement of the full implementation of shari’ah which was adopted in principle shortly after Zamfara in 2000, the Kano State government, early in November 2003, ordered the immediate closure of all fun spots in the 44 local government areas of the state. A bill sponsored by Kano Sharia Implementation Committee (hisbah) sought to put the full implementation of shari’ah into force by the second week of November 2003.62 It is worthy of note that in the implementation of the penal code, the state governments rely not on the conventional law enforcement agents but, rather, on young Muslim enthusiasts and activists (hisbah), fondly called “shari’ah police.” It was this same group that actually sponsored the bill on full implementation of the shari’ah at the Kano State House of Assembly. It is apposite to remark that the hisbah has generated a strong negative feeling in the federal government circles and the national security system. The latest expression of the government’s discomfort with it was the proclamation of a ban on it along with a ban on ethnic vigilante groups that was declared on 7 February 2006, a proclamation which was challenged a week later at the Supreme Court in Abuja by the Kano State government. Shari’ah in the New Public Sphere The analysis so far has given the background to the re-emergence of the shari’ah issue in the Nigerian polity at the beginning of the twenty-first century, particularly in the Northern States, where its penal aspects are being implemented for the first time since independence in 1960. But the wave has not been limited to the north, as a strong movement for its implementation in the south, specifically in Yorubaland, had been provided a strong impetus by the Zamfara example. It is probably not amiss to remark at this juncture that the return of the shari’ah debate to the “public sphere” after the Zamfara revolution has to do with the ideational framework of the concept as “the site where contests take place over the definition of the ‘common good’, and also of the virtues, obligations and rights that members of society require for the common good to be realized.”63 Muslims across the country found an opportune chance in the Zamfara experiment to articulate their desire for the restoration of a right that had hitherto remained suppressed or curtailed in a historical and political continuum. Shortly after shari’ah became operational in Zamfara State, the National Council of Muslim Youth Organizations (NACOMYO) initiated a bill to introduce shari’ah in Oyo State.64 The initiative met a stone wall from the political establishment in the state whose head, the governor, was incidentally a Muslim. So, in May 2002, the Supreme Council for Sharia in Oyo State was established through the efforts of NACOMYO with the active support of some Muslim patrons. The intention was to empower the Council to exercise jurisdiction on civil and criminal matters, and to administer the hudud (mandatory criminal sanctions). Many members of the Council are legists and experts in Islamic law. It did not take long before the Council would exercise its authority in defiance of the muted objection of the state.
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In October 2002, one Sulaiman Shittu had requested that the Shariah Council administer on him the prescribed hadd punishment for fornication, which he claimed to have committed sometimes in June that year. Initially, the Council pleaded lack of jurisdiction, but when the man insisted and reminded the Council that they will be answerable to Allah for failing to carry out the sanction, he was allowed four weeks to think over his confession. Once he came back to confirm his commission of the offence, a panel of judges headed by one Ahmad Tiamiyu Olawale, with the membership of AbdulRashid Adiatu—a Saudi trained shari’ah expert—and Ishaq Kunle Sanni, the President of NACOMYO, sat at the Ojaba Central Mosque in Ibadan on Thursday 31 October 2002, when 100 strokes of the cane were administered on Sulaiman in the presence of a large number of observers.65 A remarkable implementation of the new shari’ah dispensation in south-west Nigeria can also be seen in the example of Lagos State where an independent Shari’ah panel has continually and systematically operated the system following on the Zamfara model. The panel here adjudicates largely on issues of Muslim family matters, although it has also decided some civil cases, such as land disputes. Some of its judgments are now published documents. The Zamfara revolution, having successfully extended the domain of the operational shari’ah to what has hitherto been the domain of the Common Law since Independence, namely, abuse of office by public servants; financial crimes; and breach of public moralities, assumed some added significance. For instance, a news report of Friday 8 April 2004, indicated that some 127 people, presumably Muslims, had taken the governor of Jigawa State, Saminu Turaki, to an Upper Sharia Area Court at Dutse on charges of financial impropriety. The litigants objected to the governor’s legal representation by a Christian attorney whom they described as not being competent.66 This case raises questions with far-reaching implications, not least of which is of the constitutional immunity from prosecution that is granted certain elected officials, including state governors. Already we are faced with a scenario of “clash of constitutions,” an antinomy, in so far as the shari’ah does not recognize the principle of immunity for any public official, whatever his status. Interestingly, the then Chief Justice of Nigeria Muhammad Uwais and the National Judicial Council were already campaigning in favor of the removal of the immunity clause from the Constitution.67 However, it is not clear whether they were acting under the influence of shari’ah or were simply responding to the exigencies of the current dispensation. The position of the Yan Izala, an anti-Sufi back-to-basics, apolitical movement, with regard to the re-launch of shari’ah, is eminently ambiguous. Its leadership from the time of its patron saint Abubakar Gumi (d.1992) had not been free from allegation of compromise and allegiance to the establishment.68 The Muslim Brotherhood of Zak Zaky is one of the most important voices in the new discourse on shari’ah after the Zamfara revolution, not for its support for the model, but rather for its opposition to it. Ibrahim Zak Zaky draws his infantry from the victims of political and economic failures of the past. However, the group does not believe that the present political arrangement that is not wholly Islamic will in any way solve the problem of poverty, unemployment, and other inequalities, the solution of which is the ultimate aim of the ideal shari’ah.69 The half-hearted implementation of shari’ah in the states has been attributed to a variety of reasons, notwithstanding the status and caliber of those put in charge. For instance, Abdullahi Aminci, the Deputy Governor of Katsina is the Chairman of the State Sharia Implementation Committee. The Emir of Katsina singles out disagreement among Muslims as a factor.70 The resurgence of interest in the Islamic legal system is
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simply an indictment of the existing socio-political systems, and, to borrow from Masud, “signifies the semantics of the people’s expectations that shari’ah will solve the contradictions emerging under the impact of modernity.”71 At the moment, there is the Supreme Council of Shari’a in Nigeria (SCSN) a national body that has the support of the Muslim intelligentsia. Its Secretary-General is Nafiu Baba Ahmed. Interestingly, its leader Datti Ahmed, is a trained physician rather than a jurist, a fact that has heightened the skepticism of many that behind the fac¸ade of commitment to shari’ah is an unseen agenda, especially with the current unstinting opposition of the Council leadership to the administration of polio vaccines on children in the north arising from its unsubstantiated claim that the vaccines had been contaminated with such elements that could lead to infertility, HIV, and polio itself. The ultimate objective, it is argued, is reduction of the population of the north.72 Since the inauguration of the new National Assembly in August 2003, a sustained campaign against the death penalty has been intense. The SCSN and other Muslim organizations have interpreted this, perhaps not without reason, as a subtle attempt at undermining the shari’ah in the profile sanction of which the death penalty is central. There is also the Council for the Defense and Propagation of Sharia, a national body, whose Secretary, Muhammad Inuwa, was part of the 12-member committee put in place by the Federal Government on 14 November 2003, to study the issue of the death penalty. The Catholic Church, whose Commission for Peace and Justice is also represented on the Committee, convened a seminar at its secretariat in Lagos on 9 February 2004, during which it called for the abrogation of capital punishment altogether in Nigeria. All this is not likely to go down well with the shari’ah advocates. The controversy over shari’ah in Nigeria shows no sign of abating, regardless of the intensity of opposition or support. The question of constitutional legitimacy has effectively been resolved in favor of the legal system, and the helplessness of those who might not be positively disposed to it is further compounded by the level of public support among the Muslims for whom the shari’ah is meant in the first place. President Obasanjo, though, could not hide his strong aversion to the punitive aspect of the shari’ah admitted that he has not got the right to stop the shari’ah states from implementing laws of their state; his advice was that convictions be taken to Appeal Courts to prevent stoning to death from ever taking place in Nigeria.73 A clear demonstration of the level of public support can be gauged from the reaction of those on whom the law is administered and from the operators, too. Both Jangeli and Lawal Isa, the Zamfara amputees now in the employment of the state, expressed satisfaction with the punishment which has now made them more religious.74 When asked about how it has been since shari’ah was introduced in Yobe State, governor Bukar Ibrahim said:
It has impacted positively [and] morally. Many women now thank the government for introducing shari’a. After closing from work their husbands used to go about drinking and coming back home very late. Now, they do not even go out at all because there is nowhere to go except the few who go out for sports . . . there is nowhere in Yobe where you can buy alcohol. There is nowhere you will find prostitutes living in a compound. There is nowhere in Yobe where you find women intermingling. Almost all our women have started using the veil all over the state, and we have shari’a implementation committee in every local government. It is just that we have not been publishing some of the things we do.75
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Conclusion This study has attempted to give a survey of the history and operation of shari’ah in Nigeria in the context of the historical evolution of nationalism, youth activism, and the various political templates that had imposed themselves on the socio-political structure of Nigeria from the pre-colonial times till present. The presentation is probably less than coherent and systematic. This was perhaps not intended but it was unavoidable: the subject itself derives from an unintended documentation of events that have trailed the resurgence of advocacy for shari’ah, hence the re-emergence of conflict and violence in which the Nigerian youth is an active participant in its instigation, promotion, and sacralization. One relevant question that has been raised is whether we human beings have inherited from our genetic and evolutionary past a propensity for violence.76 The simple explanation that may be proffered here is that tendency towards peace or propensity to violence is innate and latent in man, he only needs certain stimuli to activate either. From the status of a keen observer, the Nigerian Muslim youth has transformed itself into a tool for national cohesion and universal integration, having succeeded in bridging the ethnic and social divide between the north and south in the pursuit of religious rights and social privileges. The extent to which this can be sustained in the twenty-first century, the era of globalization, will depend on a variety of factors, not least is the ability and success of such rallying points, in this case the shari’ah, at solving the basic problems which inspired the zest and zeal for its institutionalization in the first place.
NOTES 1. See Talal Asad, “Thinking about Secularism and Law in Egypt,” The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Paper 2, Leiden: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, 2001. 2. John Hatch, Nigeria: A History, London: Martin Secker and Warburg, 1971, p. 197. 3. See “Sudan, bilad al-”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (New Edition), Leiden: Brill, 1997, Vol. IX, pp. 752–761; John Hunwick, Shari’a in Songhay: The Replies of al-Maghili to the Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad, London: Oxford University Press, 1985. 4. Allan Christelow, “Islamic Law in Africa,” in N. Levtzion and R. L. Pouwels, eds, The History of Islam in Africa, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002, pp. 3–79. 5. See Adam Abd Allah al-Ilori, al-Islam fi Naijiriya wa-’Uthman Ibn Fudi, Cairo: Abd al-Hamı¯d Hanafi ˙ Press, 1950, pp. 21–27. 6. For more on al-Maghili, see Arabic Literature of Africa Volume—The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa, compiled by John O. Hunwick, Leiden: Brill, 1995, pp. 20–25. 7. A. Christelow, “Islamic Law in Africa,” op. cit., p. 380. 8. Omar Bello, “Muhammad Bello’s Ideal of Criminal and Political Justice,” in Sayed Khalid Rashid, ed., Islamic Law in Nigeria, Lagos: Islamic Publications Bureau, 1986, p. 39. 9. A useful account of the history and practice of shari’ah is provided by Musa Ali Ajetunmobi, “Sharia Legal Practice in Nigeria 1956–1983,” unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, 1988. 10. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford: Clarendon, 1964, p. 86. 11. Compare John N. Paden, Ahmadu Bello Sardauna of Sokoto—Values and Leadership in Nigeria, Zaria: Huda Publishing Company, 1986, p. 85. 12. Abdul Malik B. Mahmud, A Brief History of Shariah in the Defunct Northern Nigeria, Jos, Nigeria: Jos University Press, 1988, p. 2. 13. Philip Ostein, A Study of the Court Systems of Northern Nigeria, Jos, Nigeria: Jos University Press, 1999, p. 9. 14. Allan Christelow, “Islamic Law and Judicial Practice in Nigeria: an Historical Perspective,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2002, pp. 185 –204 (p. 191). 15. Charlotte A. Quinn and Fredrick Quinn, Pride, Faith, and Fear—Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 40.
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16. Mark Bray, P. B. Clarke and D. Stephens, “Islamic Education: Continuity and Change,” in Education and Society in Africa, London: Edward Arnold, 1986, pp. 79–100 (p. 90). 17. Compare Christelow, “Islamic Law in Africa,” op. cit., p. 383. 18. Colony of Lagos Gazette, 1901, 648ff, as quoted by T. G. O. Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam among the Yoruba 1841–1908, London: Longman, 1978, p. 107. 19. E. I. Nwogugu, Family Law in Nigeria, Ibadan: no publisher, 1974, p. 120. The customary law has been recognized to include Islamic law, especially in personal matters, according to the Nigerian High Court Law 52 of 1963. Justice Akinola Aguda is reported to have said that it is unlikely that divorce in Nigeria would have increased at such an alarming rate if customary, including Islamic, law of marriages were given legal recognition like the statutory form of marriage. See “The Judicial Approach to Customary Law Marriage,” in The Marriage Law of Nigeria, a publication of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 1981. 20. T. G. O. Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam, op. cit., p. 123, fn 192. 21. Siyan Oyeweso, Eminent Yoruba Muslims, Ibadan: Rex Charles, 1999, p. 20. On early native votaries of the Islamic faith, see J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000, p. 190ff. 22. Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam, op. cit., pp. 233–234. 23. Mahmud, A Brief History, op. cit., p. 4. 24. Christelow, “Islamic Law and Judicial Practic,” op. cit. Compare Mahmud, A Brief History, op. cit., p. 2. 25. Aliu B. Fafunwa, “The Relevance of Jamaat-ul Islamiyya to Islam in Nigeria,” National Concord, Friday, 8 April 1994, p. 23. 26. See James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1958, pp. 220 –267. 27. Stefan Reichmuth, Islamische Bildung und soziale Integration in Ilorin (Nigeria) seit ca. 1800, Muenster: LIT Verlag, 1998, pp. 320 –325. For a detailed history of the organization, see Kamil K. Oloso, “The Contribution of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria to the Islamic Resurgence in Southern Nigeria 1954–1980,” unpublished MA Thesis, Dept of Arabic & Islamic Studies, University of Ibadan, 1981. 28. See Peter Clarke and Ian Linden, Islam in Modern Nigeria—A Study of a Muslim Community in a PostIndependence State 1960– 1983, Mainz and Munchen: Kaiser & Grunewald, 1984, pp. 81ff. 29. The society adopted this name in 1947, although it started in Ilorin in 1943 under the name Adabiyya Muslim Society. See S. Reichmuth, “A Regional Centre of Islamic Learning in Nigeria: Ilorin and its Influence on Yoruba Islam,” in Nicole Graudin and M. Gaborieau, eds, Madrasa La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris: Edition Argument, 1997, p. 243. 30. R. Loimeier and Stefan Reichmuth, “Bemuhungen der Muslime um Einheit und politische Geltung,” in Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, ed., Muslime in Nigeria—Religion und Gessellschaft im politischen Wandel seit den 50er Jahren, Muenster: LIT Verlag, 1993, p. 47. 31. Rosalind I. J. Hackett, “Radical Christian Revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana—Recent Pattern of Intolerance and Conflict,” in Abdullahi A. An-Na’im, ed., Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa, New York: Orbis Books, 1999, p. 256. 32. Peter Clarke and Ian Linden, Islam in Modern Nigeria, op. cit., p. 88. 33. Cf. Encyclopaedia of African and African-American Religions, ed., S. D. Glazier, New York and London: Routledge, 2001, s.v. “Islam in West Africa,” (P. B. Clarke), p. 160. 34. A. Rahman I. Doi, Non-Muslims Under Shari’ah, London: Taha Publishers, 1983. 35. Victor F. Wan-Tatah, “The Shari’a Issue in Nigerian Politics,” Studies in Contemporary Islam, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2001, p. 32. 36. Peter Clarke and Ian Linden, Islam in Modern Nigeria, op. cit., p. 89. 37. Walter Ofonagoro, ed., The Great Debate: Nigerian Viewpoints on the Draft Constitution 1976/77, Lagos: no publisher, 1978, p. 375. 38. Loimeier and Reichmuth, “Bemuhungen,” op. cit., p. 63. 39. Christelow, “Islamic Law in Africa,” op. cit., p. 385, quoting David Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 40. See Peter Clarke and Ian Linden, Islam in Modern Nigeria, op. cit., pp. 167–168. 41. Loimeier and Reichmuth, “Bemuhungen,” op. cit., p. 67. 42. Cf. J. Hunwick, “Sub-Saharan Africa and the Wider World of Islam-Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” in D. Westerlund and E. Evers Rosander, eds, African Islam and Islam in Africa— Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, London: Hurst & Co., 1997, p. 39. 43. Loimeier and Reichmuth, “Bemuhungen,” op. cit., p. 68.
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44. J. Hunwick, “Sub-Saharan Africa,” op. cit., p. 40. 45. Quinn and Quinn, Pride, Faith, and Fear, op. cit., p. 33. 46. Whereas Chief Bola Ige (d. 2001) endorsed the constitutionality of shari’ah in his capacity as the Attorney-General of Nigeria, his immediate successor in office argued otherwise, on the ground that the punishment regime of shari’ah is discriminatory against the Muslims. 47. See Lamin Sanneh, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, p. 184. 48. Useful studies on religion and politics related violence in Nigeria include Amidu Sanni, “The Sacralisation of Violence in the Promotion of Religious Idealism: the Nigerian Experience”, Hamdard Islamicus, Vol. 29, No. 3, July–September 2006, pp. 27–33; idem, “Terror in the Name of God and the Society: the Nigerian Youth and the Economy of Violence”, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Youth, Politics, and the Global South Dakar-Senegal 13–15, October, 2006, forthcoming; idem, “The Nigerian Muslim Youth: Issues in Violence Engineering in the Public Sphere”, Journal of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 16, 2007, forthcoming; Toyin Falola, The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies, Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998; P. A. Tokunbo-Williams and P. E. Lovejoy, eds, Displacement and the Politics of Violence in Nigeria, Leiden: Brill, 1997; Matthew H. Kukah and T. Falola, Religious Militancy and SelfAssertion—Islam and Politics in Nigeria, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1996. 49. Africa Independent Television (AIT) program, “Kaakaki.” 50. National Concord, 22 January 2001. 51. He said this on a pubic phone-in program, “Fact File” on Raypower Radio, 31 January 2000. 52. BBC “Focus on Africa” of Tuesday, 29 October 2002. 53. A recent work on al-Qaeda is Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda—Casting a Shadow of Terror, London: Taurus, 2003. The author is the prize-winning Chief Reporter for the Observer of London. 54. Interview with Prof. D. O. S. Noibi on the BBC, “The World Today,” Thursday, 25 September 2003. 55. Problems associated with the implementation of shari’ah in some Northern States and the reaction of the West as well as the influence of Iranian politics on the Nigerian political system are part of the subjects of the Conference on Political Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa held at Universite Paris 7 Denis Diderot France (28–29 October 2002). See the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter, No. 11/02, 2002, p. 36. 56. Interview on Friday, 21 June 2002 on BBC “The World Today.” The view was articulated more extensively in her paper entitled “Gender and Islam: Discourses and Politics,” which was presented at the International Conference on Shari’a Penal and Family Laws in Nigeria and in the Muslim World: a Rights Based Approach, Abuja, 5– 8 August 2003. It was convened by the International Human Rights Law Group, Abuja, with support from the German Embassy in Nigeria. 57. Detailed analysis of some of the issues involved is given in the presentation of Barrister Aliyu Musa Yawuri entitled “Issues in Defending Safiya Husaini, Amina Lawal and Others” at the conference held in Abuja on 5– 8 August 2003 (see ibid.). For more examples and statistics see M. O. Opeloye, “The Sustainability of Shari’ah in a Pluralistic and Democratic Nigeria,” the fifth Faculty of Arts Lagos State University Lecture series, delivered on 24 August 2005. 58. British Broadcasting Corporation report filed by Sam Olukoya on 17 December 2002. 59. Channels News at 10, 25 January 2003. 60. Premier FM Radio Ibadan News of 5 January 2003. 61. The Punch, Monday, 10 November 2003. 62. The Punch, Thursday, 6 November 2003. For more on the hisbah and additional details on the political dimensions of the legal system since 1999, see the Human Rights Watch report entitled “Political Shari’ah? Human Rights and Islamic Law in Northern Nigeria”, Vol. 16, No. 9, (A), 2004, available online at: (accessed 21 September 2004). 63. Dale Eickelman and A. Salvatore, “The Public Sphere and Muslim Identities,” European Journal of Sociology, Vol. XLIII, 2002, p. 94. The literature on public sphere and civil society continues to grow. On the relationship between the civil society, the rule of law and the state, see Mehran Kamrava, “The Civil Society Discourse in Iran,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2001, pp. 165–185. One of the latest authoritative works on the public sphere is Dale F. Eickelman and John W. Anderson, eds, New Media in the Muslim World – the Emerging Public Sphere, Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. 64. Quinn and Quinn, Pride, Faith, and Fear, op. cit., p. 35.
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65. The Punch, 31 October and 1 November 2002. See also The Vanguard of 1 November 2002, among other Nigerian dailies. For the published judgments of the Lagos State panel, see Selected Judgments of the Lagos State Independent Shari’ah Panel, Lagos: Graphix Solutions, 2005. 66. In courts applying the shari’ah, a non-Muslim is normally considered incompetent to be a witness where the accused is a Muslim. See Ostein, A Study, op. cit., p. 25. 67. See the Guardian, Thursday, 15 April 2004, as well as other Nigerian dailies. 68. An authoritative study on the Izala is Ousmane Kane, Muslim Modernity in Post-Colonial Nigeria, Leiden: Brill, 2003. A slightly older but useful study is Roman Loimeier, “Islamic Reform and Political Change—The Example of Abubakar Gumi and the Yan Izala Movement in Northern Nigeria,” in D. Westerlund and E. Evers Rosander, eds, African Islam and Islam in Africa, op. cit., pp. 286 –307. 69. For details see Quinn and Quinn, Pride, Faith, and Fear, op. cit., pp. 43–47. 70. News report of 27 October 2003. 71. Muhammad Khalid Masud, “Muslim Jurists’ Quest for the Normative Basis of Shari’a,” Inaugural Lecture of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), Leiden: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, 2001, p. 4. 72. Tell (Nigerian independent weekly magazine), No. 14, 5 April 2004, p. 9. 73. President Obasanjo’s interview with Dan Isaac of the BBC on Monday 17 February 2003. 74. Report by Sam Olukoya on BBC Africa on 17 December 2002. 75. Tell, No. 44, 3 November 2003, p. 25. 76. Ted Peters, “The Origins of Violence”, [Editorials], Theology and Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2004, p. 4. Some recent, useful studies on the operation of shari’ah in Nigeria since 1999 are Philip Ostein, “An Opportunity missed by Nigeria’s Christians: the 1976– 78 Shari’a Debate Revisited”, in MuslimChristian Encounters in Africa, ed., Benjamin F. Soares, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006, pp. 221–55; Franz Kogelman, “Sharia Debatten- Impressionen aus dem zeitgeno¨ssischen Nigeria”, in M. Bro¨ning, Holger Weiss, eds., Politischer Islam in Westafrika- Eine Bestandaufnahme, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2006, pp. 179 –87; Ousmane Kane, “Political Islam in Nigeria”, in M. Bro¨ning, Holger Weiss, eds., Politischer Islam in Westafrika, op. cit. pp. 154–78; “The Development of Law and Legal Systems”, in Dynamism in Islamic Activism, compiled by [The Netherlands] Scientific Council for government Policy, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006, pp. 109–51; Philip Ostein, Jamila M. Nasir, Franz Kogelmann, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Shari’a in Nigeria, Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2005; M. A. Muhibbu-din, ed., Shari’a in a Multi-faith Nigeria – Proceedings of the 21st National Conference of the Nigerian Association of Teachers of Arabic and Islamic Studies (NATAIS) Maiduguri 2002, Ijebu Ode (Nigeria): NATAIS, 2005; Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, Muhammad Tawfiq Ladan, Abiola Afolabi Akiyode, eds., Shari’a Implementation in Nigeria – Issues and Challenges on Women’s Rights and Access to Justice, Lagos: Wacol, 2004; Johannes Harnischfeger, “Sharia and Control Over Territory: Conflicts between ‘Settlers’ and ‘Indigenes’ in Nigeria”, African Affairs, Vol. 103, No. 412, 2004, pp. 431–52; Z. I. Oseni, ed., A Digest on Islamic Law and Jurisprudence in Nigeria – Essays in Honour of Honourable Justice Umaru Faruk Abdullah, Abuja (Nigeria): Darun-Nur, 2003; Frank A. Salmone, ‘The Waziri and the Thief: Hausa Islamic Law in a Yoruba City; a Case Study from Ibadan-Nigeria’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, Vol. 42, 1998, pp. 139–56.
