/ 19 December 2002

A hand for Allah

When Lawali Inchitara had stolen nine bicycles and sold six of them, he wrote to the governor of Zamfara state in northern Nigeria and demanded that his hand be amputated. The Islamic scholar in Inchitara’s jail had explained how this would guarantee forgiveness from Allah.

”It was very painful. But I had the faith to endure it. I felt that when I was amputated, I would be free here and thereafter,” he says.

Governor Alhaji Ahmed Sani explains he had no choice but to grant the amputation. If Islamic leaders obstruct Allah’s punishments, they will be punished themselves.

”He started cutting his hand off in prison because he knew he was a thief. He sent me a message and said that if I don’t give him the punishment God has ordered, he and I will be brought before the Lord when we die — and he will have no sin,” says Sani.

The governor was the first to introduce strict Islamic sharia laws in northern Nigeria in 1999. Since then 11 other states have followed Zamfara, in many instances on public demand. Amputations for theft and robbery, lashings for drinking of alcohol and stoning to death for adultery are seen as God-given punishments and efficient measures against spiralling crime.

But sharia can’t be understood without its political context. Until 1998 the Muslim north possessed the most power in Nigeria. The late dictator Sani Abacha’s rule allowed the Muslim-dominated military to exploit most of the wealth in the oil-rich, mainly Christian south.

After Abacha’s death and the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo — a Christian southerner — the Muslims felt a need to sharpen their cultural profile. Since then more than 10 000 people have been killed in religious, political and ethnic clashes similar to those that last month drove the Miss World contest out of Nigeria.

In Zamfara the governor credits sharia for everything from happier families to a four-fold increase in farming output.

”Apart from the military barracks, you’ll never find a place where alcohol is served. So all our people are mentally alive. You’ll never find a brothel. So instead of wasting your money on prostitutes and [getting] Aids, you now have a lot of money to take care of your family and to buy more fertilizers.”

Sharia is backed by self-proclaimed vigilantes — hundreds of young men in khaki and black uniforms using long sticks to enforce moral values and a curfew after midnight.

”We are here just to assist people,” says Abdullahi Muhammed, a 20-year-old accounting student. He spends nights during university holidays confiscating alcohol and chasing lovebirds in the streets of Gusau.

”If we find out they are coming from a place that’s not good, we’ll take them to the police. And next morning they’ll appear in court and be sentenced according to their offence.”

Does he ever feel sorry for them?

”Of course,” says Muhammed. It’s not entirely clear whether he pities his peers for their sinful lifestyle or for the lashes for teenage activities that just three years ago were also part and parcel of growing up in Gusau.

Muhammed’s own internal pre-sharia teenager pops out from under his steel helmet — and then only in one word — when I ask what he would do, if he saw a beautiful girl in the street.

”I would go to her parents and inform them that I am interested in meeting their babe”.

A group of Christian students on their way home from college complain that they have to walk because they are no longer allowed to use the motorbikes serving as cheap taxis

”We can’t dress as we want to,” says Mary Donatus. Small children bombard her with rubber band-propelled paper pellets if she wears jeans.

”But in some other respects, sharia is good. It has stopped men going after other people’s wives.”

Adultery is punished by stoning to death if at least one of the participants is married or divorced. But Zamfara has not yet seen any of the cases that in neighbouring states have brought Nigeria international condemnation.

One reason is allegedly that Zamfara’s sharia judges were trained by instructors from Saudi Arabia. They know that adultery is very difficult to prove if people don’t confess.

It takes four independent witnesses who have all been close enough to see the penis enter the vagina. If one of the witnesses backtracks in court, the other three will each receive 80 lashes for false accusation.

This makes it close to impossible for men to get convicted. For women, pregnancy itself is regarded as proof. But if she was divorced within five years of the pregnancy, she can claim a so-called ”sleeping embryo”.

”Sharia is not meant to punish, it is meant to deter people from committing crimes. If you have a girlfriend and enter a room with her, no one tries to follow you,” says the governor.

Sharia’s punishment for prying into other people’s affairs is a lashing.

But when the evidence is regarded as clear-cut, Sani has no hesitations in letting the courts hit out hard.

Last year a 17-year-old girl was lashed publicly after having had a child before marriage.

The girl claimed that she was raped after three of her father’s friends had given her a Coca-Cola laced with a sedative. The men denied the charge.

So on top of the 100 lashes for the intercourse, the girl was given an additional sentence of 80 for false accusation. The lashing did, however, stop at 100 in ”a show of mercy”.

Physical punishment of children under the age of 18 is prohibited in the United Nations declaration on children’s rights, which Nigeria has ratified. But the federal government has never interfered with the regular lashings in the north or tested the sharia laws against the Constitution’s prohibition of ”inhuman and degrading treatment”.

”The definition of inhuman and degrading are subjective. No Muslim in this world, not in Nigeria, will say amputation is degrading”, says Sani.

Gusau’s sharia courts now deal with many cases that were previously heard by the magistrate’s court. Most offences have fixed punishments: 80 lashes for drinking of alcohol, 20 for lying, 50 for gossiping.

In the case of theft, the punishment is 10 to 100 lashes in minor cases, otherwise amputation of the right hand, followed by the left hand, right foot and finally left foot in case of repeated offences.

”The idea is to handicap you so that you don’t steal again. It would be very difficult to steal with your mouth, eh?” says Mustapha Abubakar, an attorney in neighbouring Sokoto state.

He has lodged appeals on behalf of a number of boys and young men sentenced to amputation and will work hard to find flaws in the evidence against them. But as long as the boys get a fair trial, he is greatly in favour of the punishments.

”These offences are created by God who also provided the punishments. Whatever he says is good for humanity. He is the creator and knows what’s good for you.”

So it’s good for a woman to be stoned to death for adultery?

”Yes — in order not to have the wrath in the life after.”

In Gusau the lashings are handed out immediately after the sentencing in front of the court building. The cane is hanging over the desk behind which a short-sighted judge is battling his way through his papers.

He senses that lashings don’t look good in pictures for international media, even if they — as prescribed — are meted out with the elbow held against the body to lessen the impact.

”Take your white man and disappear,” he tells our translator.

Later our stay in Gusau is terminated by a scepticism towards foreigners that often boils over into outright hostility. During our nightly trip with the vigilantes, we are stopped by five aggressive men from police intelligence with AK-47s.

The negotiations to get our passports back end at noon the following day at the office of the Deputy Governor Alhaji Mahmud Shinkafi. He will later become world famous for issuing a fatwa — an Islamic death sentence — against a journalist whose article about the Prophet Muhammad and the Miss World competition triggered last month’s riots.

Shinkafi orders us to leave his state immediately, but reluctantly agrees to let us interview the amputated bicycle thief on our way out.

Apart from the practical implications, the loss of the right hand is a lifelong humiliation as it forces him to eat with the left, ”dirty” hand. But Lawali Inchitara insists that he is happy. Particularly after he has demanded and received a grossly inflated payment for his ”travel expenses” before the interview.

The amputation was the only way out when he realised that he was a serial bicycle thief, he says.

”There are so many people who now love and respect me. This was what I dreamt about.”