RELIGION-NIGERIA: Islamic Sharia Favours the Rich

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Feb 14 2002 (IPS) - Reports coming in from Zamfara, one of the six northern states in Nigeria to enforce the Islamic legal code, Sharia, suggest that it has been affecting the influential rich and the vulnerable poor quite differently.

The Islamic code was announced in 1999 but took effect from January 2000.

Of the more than 30 persons punished under Sharia law in Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto and Kano states, only two, a director and an accountant with the Sokoto State National Orientation Agency, were from the professional classes. The others were herders, motor cyclists, Muslim clerics, traders and a teenage mother.

Most of the accused persons were arrested for offences that range from carrying a Muslim woman on a motor cycle to fornication, alcoholism, gambling and homosexuality. The punishments meted out varied from several lashes of the cane to fines, imprisonment and amputation. Eight herders have lost limbs for stealing.

The punishment for women is also severe. Magazu Ibrahim, a teenage mother in Zamfara State was given 100 lashes, while the wife of one of the amputated herders died of shock when her husband returned home without his arm.

David Ishaya, former Zamfara State Chairperson of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told a news magazine recently that more than 50 people might have been stoned to death in the state for violating Islamic laws.

Though the claim, according to the magazine, was contested by Sanusi Kaura, a director in the Zamfara state Directorate for Sharia Implementation and Monitoring, the credibility of the Sharia courts has taken a beating from allegations that only ordinary citizens are charged and convicted for contravening the strict Islamic laws.

In mid-September, three Sharia judges in the state were indicted for receiving bribes and ruling in favour of the rich, but the state judicial commission only placed them under suspension and on half salary, pending the determination of the level of their involvement in the bribery scandal.

Top government officials in Zamfara, including the council chairpersons, have been accused of fraud; the state governor was also accused of distributing fertiliser to only farmers in his political party – all these are viewed as anti-Sharia conduct but no one has been arrested or punished, according to critics.

“One top government functionary claimed he bought 500 wheelbarrows at the cost of five million naira, whereas, wheelbarrows do not cost as much. Yet the Sharia has not been brought to bear on any top government official in the state,” observes Bello Maru, Zamfara state secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Zamfara is ruled by the rival All Peoples Party (APP).

But Kaura argued that the directorate has achieved much since its inception about two years ago.

He said the directorate has closed down beer parlours and brothels. “All avenues and rendezvous for anti-Sharia activities have been eliminated with the closure of brothels, beer parlours, gambling joints, cinema houses and the ban on the sale of alcohol in hotels throughout the state.

The enforcement of the Sharia has affected women in different ways. While sex workers have been forced off the streets, depriving them of their only source of livelihood, according to reports, single female tenants have been served quit notices by their Muslim landlords and female hairdressers have been given the marching orders.

There are complaints that since men and women are no longer allowed to travel in the same bus, with very few buses designated for only women, women are now walking miles to reach destinations, since they are also prohibited from sitting on the ubiquitous motorbikes.

While Sharia vigilantes make life unbearable for sex workers on the streets of Gusau, the state capital, brothels and night clubs in the suburbs where alcohol is served in contravention to Islamic law, are still being patronised by the rich. But couples have become more discreet to avoid being harassed by Sharia vigilantes. The men and women arrive separately at selected GuestHouses and pose as brother and sister if they are asked.

In Morocco, one such suburb, men throng nightclubs to pick up young women, some of whom, Kauru of the Directorate of Sharia Implementation and Monitoring alleged, are students of a nearby federal government college.

Kaura said that it was “people who were out to undermine Sharia” who “patronised such night clubs”.

“We have received several reports and complaints about the Morocco area which is near a female college. Men go to pick up female students at the joints, which are still operating in the area,” he said.

He alleged that once his team who were sent to arrest offenders in the area had their vehicle windscreens smashed by irate students who had been instigated by the male visitors.

But Amina Abubakar, provost of the college, denied that her female students were into prostitution, arguing that some of the women are married, and since they live on campus they receive visitors some of who are their husbands, parents, guardians or friends.

Although she has been forced to restrict visiting hours to three hours a day because of pressure from the Sharia monitors, she has warned that the college would not segregate the sexes as it has been demanded under the Sharia of all colleges and schools in the state.

“This is a tertiary institution. We have people from different cultural backgrounds with different religious beliefs. Nobody can force separation among us here,” Abubakar said.

However, in the state-owned polytechnic in nearby Talata Mafara, female students are forced to dress the Sharia way irrespective of their religion. There is no contact between the sexes in public, in fact it is forbidden; male and female students travel in separate buses and are made to sit separately in classrooms.

The male students are said to be not happy about introduction of the Sharia codes in their campus, accusing the Sharia monitors of looking the other way when it comes to its implementation for the rich.