Kano State to adopt Sharia

Kano State resolved on Thursday to adopt the Islamic legal code, Sharia. The decision was taken at a joint meeting of the governor, assemblymen, judicial heads and the city's emir, Alhaji Ado Bayero, `The Guardian' reported. Members of the Council of Ulama, the Islamic body that spearheaded the private bill on Sharia's adoption which entered its second reading on Wednesday, were also present at the four-hour meeting. Zamfara, another state in the north, formally declared Sharia at the end of October, the first Nigerian state to do so. Sharia, a penal code which has been in existence in the north prior to independence in 1960, was fashioned out of the Pakistani and Sudanese laws, observers say.