Lagos | Friday
Nigeria’s government has declared strict Islamic law a violation of the constitution, in a move bound to cause huge unease in the mainly muslim north.
This new declaration comes two years after the system was first declared in Nigeria’s northern states.
The declaration, which has significant political implications in Nigeria a year ahead of elections, came in a letter sent to all 19 northern states, 12 of which have introduced Islamic law in the past two years.
In the letter, a copy of which was given to the Nigerian press, the country’s new Justice Minister Kanu Agabi said that the Islamic legal system, or Sharia, violates Nigeria’s constitutional commitments to respect human rights and not to discriminate on grounds of religion or sex.
Although he did not specifically mention the case, much attention has been focused in Nigeria and abroad in past months on the sentencing to death-by-stoning of a 35-year-old Nigerian woman found guilty last October of adultery.
”The fact that Sharia law applies only to muslims or to those who elect to be bound by it, makes it imperative that the rights of such persons to equality with other citizens under the constitution should not be infringed,” Agabi said in his letter.
He argued that a muslim should not be given a different punishment than one imposed on other Nigerians for a similar offence.
”Such disparity in the allocation of punishment is not only against the constitution but also against equity and good conscience…
”The stability, unity and integrity of the nation is threatened” by the drive by the northern states to introduce the Islamic legal system, he said.
The minister called on the states implementing Sharia law to amend their legislation, removing the aspects relating to criminal law and punishments.
”I appeal to you, therefore, to take steps to secure modification of all criminal laws of your state so that the courts will not be obliged to impose punishments which derogate from the rights of muslims under the constitution,” he said.
The statement by Agabi is the first unequivocal statement by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo that the criminal aspects of Islamic law violate the constitution.
In February 2001, a month after the legal system was first introduced in one state, Obasanjo said he believed the declaration of Islamic law was primarily a political act and would ”fizzle out”.
It has not done so and this has caused embarrassment to Obasanjo.
Nevertheless, the introduction of the Islamic legal system has had wide support in the mainly muslim north and any move by the government now to force states to abandon it will be unpopular with many.
Up to one million people turned out at a rally in June 2001 in the northern city of Kano to demand that Islamic law be implemented there.
The introduction of the system has, however, caused considerable tensions with the minority christian population of the north.
More than 2 000 people died in christian-muslim riots in the northern city of Kaduna in February 2001 over Sharia law and more than 500 died in christian-muslim riots in the central city of Jos last year.- Sapa-AFP