By Eze (Dr.) Enyeribe Onuoha

Nigeria is one of the most religious and superstitious countries in the world, frequently troubled by religious strife. There have been many misadventures in relations between Religion and State in the country over the years and in different federal provinces. In this paper Dr. Onuoha, speaking on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, suggests various Constitutional remedies as the first step towards redressing the situation.

History

As to the relations between Religion and State, Nigeria began in 1804 on the wrong foot, with their Union! This negation of Separation was ushered in by a Fulani Muslim scholar, Shaikh Uthman dan Fodio, who organized a formidable army of foot-soldiers and horsemen which successfully overran the greater part of Northern Nigeria at the beginning of the 19th century. He imposed on the conquered Hausa peoples of the North "the purity" of the Islamic religion based on a theocracy known as the Sokoto Caliphate. The full Sharia law from the Koran became the law of the land from which there could be no appeal since it was the "Law of God".

This was the situation in 1900 when the British government, in turn, overran both Northern and Southern Nigeria with superior military force and imposed on them a Pax Britannica. The government of Lord Lugard, the first colonial governor, was a secular government based on British law, which was quite incompatible with the crude penal code of the 8th century Sharia. To the dismay of the Hausa-Fulani Muslim ruling class, the "holy law of God" was adjudged repugnant to good conscience and humanity and, as such, was superseded by man-made British law! In addition, religion was abruptly separated from State. Neither the Sultan of Sokoto nor his field marshals, the Emirs, could dictate to the colonial government. The pendulum had swung to the right. The thesis of "Separation" had been established, and there was nothing anybody could do about it - except to nurse a grudge and wait for the end of colonial rule.

Independence came in 1960 and Sir Ahmadu Bello became the Premier of the Northern Region. He sought to be both a political leader and a religious leader. He did not scruple to use the funds and apparatus of government to establish Islamic organizations such as the Jamaatu Nasril Islam (JNI), to convert pagans to Islam and to forge links with Islamic countries across the world. His aspiration to Islamise the nation was rudely interrupted by Nigeria's first military coup d'etat on 15th January, 1966, in which, sadly, he was assassinated.

After the Nigerian Civil War, 1966-69, the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, though a Christian, was pressured in 1970 by the Kaduna Mafia to expel all foreign missionaries in the East and take over all Mission schools and hospitals in the country, in reprisal for the support given by the Church to the secessionist state of Biafra. In 1975 a Pilgrims Board funded by the State for the exclusive use of Muslims was established.

The return of the country to civilian rule in 1979 provided the Muslim elite in the North with another opportunity to breach the Separation principle. The new opportunity was the Constituent Assembly set up by the out-going Obasanjo military government in 1977 to draft a new Constitution for the nation. What could be better than to inscribe the Muslim theocratic legal system right into the Constitution? The Sharia law debate that ensued was long, loud and bitter. The Assembly was sharply divided between Christians striving to maintain the secularity of the State and Muslims bent on the Islamization of the nation. At a point in the debate, the Muslims actually staged a walk-out!

At the end, the Muslims got, in Section 275, a Sharia Court of Appeal (subject, however, to the Supreme Court) while the Christians got Section 10, curtly and rather vaguely stating that "the government of the federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion", in other words, that Nigeria is, de jure, a secular State. But, by this compromise, the Constitution contradicted itself. Sections 10 and 275 are, patently, in mutual contradiction.

The Second Republic came on stream in 1979 under President Shehu Shagari. Unable to restrain himself from active participation in the promotion of religion, he adopted the "balancing act strategy". He would do one favour to Muslims and balance it with another for Christians. Thus, in 1980, he established a Christian Pilgrims Board to make up for the existing Muslim Pilgrims Board. In 1982, he established a Board for Islamic Affairs. He built two mosques and one Id-el-Fitri Muslim Praying Ground in Abuja, the State Capital, and, in compensation, donated ten million Naira to Christians to enable them build their own Cathedral. (The Christians used the money to build a Christian Ecumenical Centre at Abuja, instead).

While the President was doing this on the official level, at public expense, from 1980 Muslims in the North resorted to another strategy at the informal, unofficial level: the use of localized physical force and religious riots to protest against the failure of Nigeria to adopt Islam as the national religion. Between 1980 and 1992, a researcher recorded 25 such riots in which innocent people were killed or maimed, churches and houses burned, and shops looted.

In 1986, the military President, Ibrahim Babangida, employing all his powers as a dictator, registered Nigeria as a full member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Muslim Strategy

We can count six ways in which Muslims in Nigeria have striven to Islamise the country:

1. All-out war: a holy war or jihad; conversion by the sword, with the establishment of a Caliphate as the ultimate objective.
2. Politicians doubling as religious leaders. Abuse of political office: State financing of religion on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio.
3. Military take-over of government; suspending the Constitution and installing a Muslim Military Head of State.
4. Getting the Sharia inscribed in the Constitution.
5. Constant religious riots, bloodshed and destruction of property organized by a mafia to pressurize the sitting President.
6. Lastly, breaking the Constitution in open defiance of the Federal Government, threatening a Civil War. "Islam shall be the State religion, or else..."

This last technique, with the threat of a civil war, has recently been successfully used in Nigeria in opposition to President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In 2000, the governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani Yerima, launched with fanfare the introduction of the Sharia Penal Code in Zamfara State, one of the 36 States of Nigeria. In effect, Zamfara became a holy State reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire of blessed memory. This meant that beer could no longer be sold in restaurants, boys and girls could not hold hands in the street or sit together in a bus, a Muslim girl cannot marry a Christian boy, a Muslim cannot convert to another religion without incurring apostasy, a woman caught in adultery will be stoned to death, a man will have his hand cut off for stealing, etc. - according to the holy law of their tyrannical God.

The whole country held its breath, watching to see what the President would do. For a whole month, the governor of Zamfara and the President of Nigeria were staring at each other, eye-ball to eye-ball. In the end, it was the President who blinked first. Immediately, eleven other States in the Muslim North joined Zamfara and installed the Sharia: Zamfara, Yobe, Taraba, Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Gombe, Bauchi and Niger States. The President chose peace with a battered Constitution rather than be drawn into another civil war!

Christian Strategy

The Christians, for their part, habitually use the second technique, abuse of power, to infiltrate government institutions, public mass media, schools and hospitals employing them corruptly as means of evangelization. They do this wherever they are the dominant population. They conduct religious services, preach their sermons and work their miracles on State radio and television, in hospitals, and even in government ministries during morning assemblies. In some States, at 12:00 noon everyday, the Angelus is recited triumphantly on State radio.

Religion gets more airtime than agriculture, health, science and technology!

Christians had long ago, during the colonial era, imposed their religious holidays on the entire nation. It was the flaunting of Christianity during the colonial era that provoked the Muslim backlash after Independence, as a result of which Nigeria, today, has far too many religious holidays. The Church should impose its holidays on its own members, not on the entire nation. In the days before the Biafran War, Nigerian governments were subsidizing Christian and Islamic schools, calling them "government- aided schools". In effect, government was subsidizing evangelism: something it should never do.

Remedies

Whether carried out by the Nigerian government or by the messianic religions (Christianity and Islam), the mixing of Religion and State is morally wrong. It is an offence against freedom of thought and conscience of Nigerian citizens, many of whom are unbelievers - a freedom enshrined in Section 38 of the Constitution. A Constitution that makes Nigeria a secular State and at the same time makes room for a Sharia Court of Appeal is in contradiction with itself.

Section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution, titled "Prohibition of State Religion", which has now become a dead law, must be revived. The way to do so is to subject that Section to further clarification by means of subsections, which state clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, what can, or cannot, be done under the Section. We propose seven subsections:
Subsection (1) - That no government in Nigeria, Federal, State or Local, shall fund religion or religious activities in any way.
Subsection (2) - No government in Nigeria shall affiliate in a religious organization, within or outside, the nation. Subsection (3) - No government in Nigeria shall adopt a law peculiar to any religion.
Subsection (4) - No government in Nigeria shall participate officially in religious services, activities or programmes, or adopt religious names, images or symbols nor participate in the selection, appointment or installation of religious authorities.
Subsection (5) - Religion shall not be taught, and proselytizing shall not be practised, in public schools, hospitals, and institutions.
Subsection (6) - The State shall not take over property belonging to religious organizations without paying adequate compensation.
Subsection (7) - Any State that breaches Section 10 of the Constitution shall be deemed to have withdrawn from the Federation and, therefore, shall, after due process, be denied Federal allocation of funds until it purges itself of its effrontery.

With Section 10 thus elaborated, Nigeria will become truly a secular State: that is, a State whose responsibility is limited to the mundane, that is, to the promotion of the security and physical welfare of its people, a State where religion is clearly in the private domain even where it is the religion of the majority, or the religion of the President or Governor, a State where religion, irreligion and State can co-exist and develop separately and peacefully, a State where freedom of conscience is the inalienable right of everyone.

Dr.Onuoha is a leader of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and is also traditional elected head of the Umuchieze people.