IRIN Focus on the introduction of the Shar’ia

Ethnic and religious emotions among Nigeria’s more than 108 million people reached a climax on Wednesday when Shar’ia (Islamic law) entered into effect in the impoverished north-western state of Zamfara, observers said. In one of his first moves after the declaration of Sharia, Zamfara State Governor Sani Ahmed said women and men would now travel in segregated public transport. To this end, the state has brought 11 special buses to be used exclusively by women. However, it is the harsher aspects of the Shar’ia, such as amputating the hand of a convicted thief, that frighten many non-Muslims, some of whom maintain that its application violates the constitution. “The constitution states Nigeria is a secular state,” Anthony Nwapa, an attorney with the Constitutional Rights Project NGO in Kaduna, told IRIN on Thursday. He said opponents of Shar’ia could only challenge its application through litigation in the High Court, which is empowered to rule on the constitutionality of a particular state law. “It cannot be an executive measure,” he said. Supporters and opponents of Shar’ia both say the penal code which has been in existence in northern Nigeria for years was fashioned out of the Pakistani and Sudanese laws. [A different code has always applied in the south, according to analysts in Nigeria.] However, the executive director of Human Rights Monitor, Festus Okoye, said the code has always operated within strict limits in northern Nigeria. The jurisdiction of Shar’ia courts, he said, was limited to matters of marriage and divorce, relationships of a family nature, issues related to wills and family succession, along with those concerning the guardianship of minors and of the mentally impaired. Okoye said the only new element in Zamfara’s adoption of the Shar’ia was the aspect of limb amputation. Islamic law is customary and needs to pass through the repugnancy test of the constitution which, he said, “means that it (Shar’ia) must conform to the tenets of justice, equality and good conscience and be in consonance with the provision in the constitution dealing with constitutional rights”. Constitutional issues dealing with freedom of thought and conscience, he said, guarantee rights for the individual and not a group or state. Therefore, no one can claim to be acting on behalf of a group. “The Zamfara government has the right to bring out any law so long as it does not contradict the constitution of Nigeria,” he said. Supporters of the Shar’ia say non-Muslims have nothing to fear, since they would be judged in regular courts for their alleged crimes. The vice chairman of the Kaduna-based Network for Justice, Bashir Isyaku, said a lot of ignorance accompanied such fears. The amputation of limbs for theft, he said, can only be carried out under strict conditions. The thief must be someone gainfully employed and must have broken into someplace to steal. The theft of articles left in his care does not warrant limb amputation. Provision for appeals exists, he said: the accused can demand evidence of his alleged crime, he can question the judge’s competence to hear his case and can question whether the state is in a position to take proper care of him. “You cannot apply the rule of theft on any Nigerian today, under the present economic situation where the reward system is absolutely distorted,” Isyaku said. To overcome this deficit, he said, Zamfara was going to try attain a monthly minimum wage of US $50, provide adequate transport and housing and work toward near-full employment. Business will, he said, be drawn to the state because Shar’ia provides the needed environment for honest businesses to flourish. “Under Shar’ia there is a fear of Allah which makes businessmen avoid fraudulent practices, seek to protect their customers and avoid exploitative tendencies,” he said. “Zamfara will attract the highest level of investment from within and outside Nigeria, because you (the businessman) will be able to trust your customer and vice versa.” Others view this as an illusion. The likelihood, they say, is that the few investors in Zamfara, such as hotel owners, will move out of state. Potential investors will simply not come because of perceived changes in commercial law and the law of contracts. “There will be complete poverty,” Okoye said. Zamfara appears to be a test case for the application of Shar’ia in Nigeria and for religious tolerance. Other states such as Bauchi, Kebbi, Sokoto and Yobe have shown interest in the Zamfara example. However, some analysts say north-central states such as Benue, Kaduna, Plateau and Nasarawa, and Kwara in the west - which have close to equal populations of Christians and Muslims - are unlikely to introduce the Shar’ia.