Leadership (Abuja)
Babagida Kakaki
9 October 2007
An Upper Sharia Court in Tudun Wada, Kaduna, has banned the sale, staging or any form of distribution of The Phantom Crescent, a play published by a notable civil rights activist and poet, Shehu Sani.
The suit with number C/No/USC/TW/ KD356/2007 came as Shehu distributed invitations to stage the play which allegedly lampoons the implementation of Islamic legal practice in Northern Nigeria.
A statement issued last night by the national publicity secretary (North) of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Mr Odoh Diego Okenyodo, explained the circumstances surrounding the ban.
Okenyedo said the plaintiff, and leader of Concerned Sharia Forum (MCSF), Alhaji Abdullahi Mohammed, in a motion exparte, had urged the Upper Sharia Court to issue an order restraining Malam Sani, "his servants, agents or privies from selling or in any way circulating the book.
Alhaji Abdullahi also asked the court to issue "other orders as this honourable court may deem fit in the circumstances to prevent the defendant from circulating the book or staging a play on the practice of Sharia in the Northern states."
The work of fiction is based on the circumstances surrounding the implementation of Shari'ah in an unnamed state by the lead character known as Governor Yerima and the social imbalance that followed it. Governor Yerima is portrayed in some scenes selectively approving amputation and stoning to death one Buba Jangebe and Safiya, respectively, while sparing Bala Dan'inna, deputy chairman of the governor's party.
In the end, there is a revolt led by Aminu, leader of the Redemption Front, who tells his excited followers: "They said it is against Sharia to take alcohol, while most of them take it. They said it is against Sharia to patronize prostitutes while most of them do it. They said it is illegal to engage in gambling while most of them do it. They said we cannnot listen to music or dance, while most of them do. Today is the end of their hypocrisy."
Shehu Sani is the author of a 292-page book, The Killing Fields: Religious Violence in Northern Nigeria, published by Spectrum Books Limited, Ibadan.
Meanwhile, a non-governmental organisation, Kaduna Indigenes Forum (KIF), comprising of technocrats, academicians and politicians from Kaduna State has raised an alarm over alleged plot to cause ethno-religious crises and destabilize the state.
Speaking to newsmen shortly after their meeting at the Arewa House, Kaduna, recently, the chairman of the group, Alhaji Abubakar Dangiwa, said the plot was aimed at discrediting certain public officers in the state through inciting publications capable of inflaming religious pasion among the citizens.
Dangiwa, who was flanked at the news conference by the secretary of the group, Dr. Timothy Yayok, and publicity secretary, Malam Gambo Alhassan, explained that the plot was hatched to coincide with the end of the Ramadan period.
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