21 March 2002
Nigeria's federal government has declared the application of strict Islamic or Sharia law unconstitutional and has asked states using the legal system to modify it according to the provisions of the country's constitution.
Justice Minister and Attorney-General Kanu Godwin Agabi, in a letter to state governors in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, made available to the media on Thursday, said some judgments passed under Sharia were discriminatory against Muslims. He said this was contrary to the constitution.
"A Muslim should not be subjected to a punishment more severe than would be imposed on other Nigerians for the same offence," Agabi said. "Equality before the law means that Muslims should not be discriminated against."
He warned: "To proceed on the basis either that the constitution does not exist or that it is irrelevant is to deny the existence of the nation itself. We cannot deny the rule of law and hope to have peace and stability."
Agabi said his office was being inundated with hundreds of protest letters daily from around the world on the "discriminatory punishments" being handed down for a number of offences by Sharia courts. He said Nigeria could not afford to be indifferent to such protests.
A total of 12 of 19 states in Nigeria's northern region have in the past two years extended the jurisdiction of Sharia law to criminal matters and moral offences. Punishments prescribed under the new code include stoning to death for adultery, amputation of limbs for stealing, and public flogging for drinking of alcohol and premarital sex.
So far, the most controversial Sharia judgment in Nigeria has been a sentence of death by stoning passed on Safiya Husseini Tunga-Tudu, 35, for adultery in Sokoto State. A ruling on her appealed against the sentence is fixed for Monday. Sharia has also fuelled religious violence in Nigeria, split almost evenly between a largely Christian, non-Muslim south and a predominantly Muslim north. The new directive by President Olusegun Obasanjo's government is a significant departure from its previous refusal to interfere with states that had adopted the strict Sharia code. Obasanjo had characterised them as political manoeuvres whose significance would wane with time.
But the latest position is likely to put the federal government on a collision course with pro-Sharia governors who had threatened to defy federal directives on the controversial issue.
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