State to remain secular

Reports that President Mamadou Tandja has ruled out the imposition of Islamic law in Niger are unlikely to have much effect in neighbouring Nigeria, where the pro-Shar’ia movement remains strong, observers told IRIN.

Tandja said on Wednesday that his government would not institutionalise Islamic law in the nation of 9.96 million because Niger was a secular state, AFP reported. Speaking in Zinder, the country’s second largest town, Tandja said Niger’s 1999 constitution aimed to “respect and protect all believers” and stipulated that “no religion could assume political power or involve itself in the affairs of state”.

Muslims make up 80 percent of Niger’s population.

In an obvious reference to northern Nigerian states that have adopted the Sharia, he said: “We do not want problems like those elsewhere.”

In Nigeria, the Sharia has been vigorously opposed by Christians and more secular minded Muslims. Civil society activists opposed to it said Tandja’s statement, though welcome, was unlikely to weaken the drive toward the Islamisation of the Nigerian north.

“It won’t make a difference,” said lawyer Juliet Ume-Ezeoke, programme assistant officer with the Lagos NGO, BAOBAB, which works with women living in Islamic societies in the Middle East and Africa.

Her view was supported by Naomi Akpan, programme officer for women and children at the Constitutional Rights Project in Lagos. Akpan told IRIN Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo needed to make a strong statement, like Tandja, so that the nation would know where it stood on the Sharia issue and move ahead.

Sharia, she said, was being driven by people who had failed to gain favours from Obasanjo after supporting his presidential candidature, but civil society would insist on Nigeria’s secularity.

“We are not going to keep quiet,” she said.