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he confession could never have been more shocking neither could the revelation have been more tweaking and unreal. His composure in that confrontation with a real and a virtual global audience on telephone and cyberspace seemed absolutely magical. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it was possible for some us in far away USA, Europe, Asia and Australia to watch the cybercast of the whole interview live. The occasion was a British Broadcasting Corporation call-in program "Talking Point" that was being staged at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, by a BBC journalist, Robin Lustig. And there was President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his sedated and recollected self, gleefully taking credit, and in fact, boasting about having been the one that first established the controversial Islamic Sharia in the Nigerian constitution. He spoke with such zest as if his Sharia accomplishments in 1979 became a major milestone in Nigeria's phantom acceleration towards a modern democracy. The whole situation looked every inch like a scene from a star trek movie with Obasanjo the alien playing a Nigeria's president from Mars who was visiting his constituency for the first time and ignorantly taking credit for both the good and the bad in the nation.
The scene of Obasanjo's Sharia confessions struck me like a meteorite from the high blue skies. In fact I began immediately to second-guess my senses. Was I hearing Mr. President correctly? Does the president of Nigeria know what he is talking about? Is he in a dream, in a daze or under some influence? Is he actually taking the credit for the monster-like face of the dangerous Sharia in Nigeria? Is Mr. President also going to take credit for inflicting all the tragedies, horrendous losses of innocent lives and property, societal upheaval and all what not, which the retrogressive implementation of the fanatical Islamic law has been visiting on the Nigerian nation? I wondered!
But why has the president of Nigeria waited this long to declare his support for the fundamentalist Islamic system of justice? Is this u-turn an essential part of his campaign strategy for re-election in 2003? Perhaps he has suddenly realized that he would have to get the bulk of the Northern votes to win a second term in office. Hence he has to reverse himself 180 degrees to endorse a dubious system of justice he had harshly criticized in the past? But will his new claim of being the Nigerian Sharia initiator help him reclaim the allegiance of the North and head off the challenge of Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara State who should be up and running for the presidency of Nigeria on the winning platform of the Sharia Law? What political calculation is Obasanjo doing with the embrace of such a contentious and divisive issue as Sharia in Nigeria? What does this about-face of the president on the Sharia palaver portend for Nigeria at large?
Furthermore, why has the president not gone on national radio and television to announce to the whole world his full support for the implementation of this legal system in Nigeria? Why has he not embarked on a public enlightenment campaign to persuade and convince Nigerians why this system of justice is needed to complement the one we have had since independence? Such an action would have long put things in their proper perspectives for the many Nigerians who are worried sick with what they see as a blind romance with Islamic fundamentalism that may ultimately spell doom for the unity of the Nigerian nation? How many Nigerians would have to die before the president realized that a little clarity on the issue of Sharia from his own side would surely help lower the rhetoric and tensions that have been attending this issue since the inception of his administration?
What about the president's well-publicized negative reactions against Sharia's implementation in the early days of his administration? Knowing in his heart that he was the one that initiated its inclusion in the Constitution and implementation in Nigeria, why did he go about telling the world that the introduction of Sharia in some states of the North was a calculated political action by some Northern elite to sabotage his administration and destroy the nascent democracy of Nigeria? How has the Sharia Law transmuted in the president's mind from being a force against democracy to an instrument for a democratic up-building? Is the president now going to take back one after the other all his former criticisms of the Northern governments that implemented the Sharia law? Is he going to reward Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara State with Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria [CFR] for resuscitating and picking up the Sharia cause from where he had left it in 1979? Obasanjo's boldface endorsement of the Sharia law implementation in his "Talking Point" interview brought a major confusion in my mind and perhaps in the minds of many other Nigerians. However the northern interest newspaper, the Daily Trust, could contain its joy over the president's late endorsement of the Sharia implementation in the Northern States (cf. Daily Trust, Feb 18, 2002). But somehow I kept telling myself that it could not be true that the born-again president of Nigeria was lending such a heavy presidential support to a system of justice that clearly undermined all principles of national cohesion and civilized living.
However as I revisited the interview prior to my beginning this commentary, I found to my utter bewilderment that Obasanjo's voice had not changed and his words had not been altered. The current president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo had in fact on that bright Sunday afternoon February 17, 2002, gloated in having been the first to unleash the draconian Sharia Law on Nigerians. And as it was perhaps expected in an interview of that nature, President Obasanjo did not disappoint with his idiosyncratic antics and tortured way of rendering the English Language. As usual the answers were belabored and hard to extract from his mouth. Words painfully dripped off his lips with the time lags of an hourglass. But to his credit the man was uncharacteristically forthcoming. His answers were candid and direct. The president exemplified candor, peace, composure and self-confidence all through the rather unfriendly interview. As he spoke I continued to say "yes the president of our nation should speak with this level of comfort all the time". He managed to maintain some level of humor and congeniality with his invisible callers and with his BBC interviewer whom he petted with his first name Robin most of the time. It was quite refreshing to see an Olusegun that was a little humorous and different from the curse-spitting and shut-up-barking Obasanjo. Except for his contoured way of answering questions, one can say that he was beautifully packaged for that interview. Bravo to his handlers! After Lustig's flowery citation of the president, calls and emails started to pour in from all parts of the globe. It did not take long before there would be the star exchange of the day between President Obasanjo on the one hand and Lustig with his callers on the other. One Celestine Onwuka from Santiago, Chile, called in to ask a question. Lustig lost his call but got the germ of his question and posed it to the president: "Why do you let Sharia Law exist in a secular state?" Obasanjo thundered right back: "We are not a secular but a multi-religious state, that is what we call ourselves in the constitution." Lustig reads to him an email question from Frances Gwandi in Cameroun: "What is your personal stand on Sharia Law and does your administration recognize it?" Shockingly Obasanjo replied, "Of course. I was the first, when I was Head of State, who put Sharia Law Court of Appeal in the Constitution of Nigeria. It is part of our Constitution. Sharia is part of the life and soul of a Muslim. In 1978 we had a Constituent Assembly, which reached an impasse on Sharia Court of Appeal, Federal Court of Appeal or no Sharia Court of Appeal. Because at the state level every state that feel that they have enough Muslims in the population, they have Sharia Law." Lustig goes on: "Do you see any connection between its extension and application to many Northern states and the increase in violence between Christian and Muslim communities in Nigeria?" Answering the president begins to hair-split in an awkwardly lawyerly way; "I would not say "No" and "Yes," because I would like to see it proven, statistics and how. Yes, there is a coincidence of timing. Take Kaduna where we had the first blowout. For one or two reasons, Kaduna has always been a hotbed. Jos had been quiet for many many years. There always have been natives, settlers. (The) Natives were mainly Christians (the) settlers were mainly Mulsims. That also has been there for many many years." Lustig cuts in and interjects, "There were 5000 people (who) have been killed in Jos in September alone." But the president countered with his exasperating rigmaroles; "Maybe Sharia has accentuated political violence, maybe not. But I will want experts to look at what has happened and be able to say that with statistics. The issue of Sharia, which I said and which I still believe is that for a Muslim, Sharia is for Muslim what the Ten Commandments is for a Christian." Lustig presses him further: "As a Christian do you not see a problem with a system of law which specifies the amputation of a hand for theft, the stoning of a woman to death for adultery?" Answering President Obasanjo says; "not because of my Christian, out of my own humaneness and humanity, I will not want to see a woman or man stoned to death. If a woman would be killed, I would want a less painful death for her offence. That is my choice." Not giving up, Lustig pushed even further: "And do you, as head of state, reserve the right to see that your choice is observed?" Cleverly Obasanjo provided perhaps his best answer in the whole interview: "My choice in a democracy can only be canvassed. In a dictatorship, my choice of course must be carried. In a democracy, it can only be canvassed. If my choice is not carried, then it is not carried. I think that is what democracy is about."
This short clip of the marathon BBC interview with Obasanjo in my view provides a great illumination on the workings of the inner mind of the personality of the president of Nigeria. I fear greatly that our president may neither have a full understanding of the Constitution under which he is running Nigeria nor have a true grasp of the dynamics of the contemporary Nigerian situation. If the views he espoused in the interview were all that he knew about Nigeria, if they provided a road-map to the way he has been and wishes to continue running Nigeria, we can say almost off hand that our country's salvation is not in sight. We still do have a very long way to go before we can begin to understand who we are and what factors and processes will help us realize the full potentials of our nation.
First, the president denies that Nigeria is a secular state. According to him "we are not a secular state but a multi-religious state. That is what we call ourselves in the Constitution." The two operative words here are "secular" and "multi-religious." And the major claim is that the citizens of Nigeria made a conscious choice from these two concepts at a particular point in the development of the current Constitution. We will come to this later. After Obasanjo's interview I made a quick search of the two major concepts of his claim in the Constitution Abubakar wrote and handed over to Nigerians before leaving office in 1999. I was not quite surprised to see that there is nothing like article 10 of the 1979 Constitution in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria. If there was any achievement of the neo-fanatical military regime that handed over power to Obasanjo it was the obliteration from the 1999 Constitution a specific article that prescribed secularity and religious independence as an essential character of the Nigerian nation. But my search for the provision of a "multi-religious" Nigeria espoused by President Obasanjo did not yield anything either. I concede that my search had not been thorough in any way. But I did not find it in the two specific chapters where it was supposed to have been explicitly included, namely, Chapter 11, which talks of "Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy "and Chapter 1V that discourses "Fundamental Rights" of Nigerians. Also I did not find it in the chapter [VII] and places [Sections 260 & 275] Ahmed Sani had quoted in 1999 as giving him the right to initiate the implementation of the Sharia Law in Zamfara State (cf. Postexpresswired, Oct. 29, 1999). I am not aware that the legislature had made any additional laws in this regard. I am assuming that there has not been any further legislation on human rights and the fundamental objectives of the Nigerian state dealing with the essential nature of the Nigerian state since the inception of democracy in the Nigerian fourth republic. A question then arises, where does the president of Nigeria get the multi-religious concept as a constitutional definition of the Nigerian state? Granted that he does not constitutionally have the judicial power to definitively interpret constitutional provisions, is the president trying to give a new interpretation to the numerous constitutional recognitions of religious differences of the present-day Nigeria? To his credit there seems to be an implicit recognition of the multi-religious nature of Nigeria in the many provisions proscribing discrimination on the grounds of religion and other differences (Section 15 [2, 3cd]; Section17 [3b], passim). But how does the president arrive at the determination that the 1999 constitution prefers a multi-religious state to a secular state?
Second, the president alleges in the interview that we the Nigerian peoples (agreed to) call ourselves multi-religious in the 1999 Constitution. Let us assume that there is a place in the current Constitution where the provision of a multi-religious Nigerian state is hidden which I could not find. However it is absolutely untrue to claim that the Nigerian peoples gave themselves such a characteristic in the present Constitution. Though there may be implicit recognition of that reality in every facet of Nigeria's life, it does not elevate it to a constitutional provision. At no point in time since the military coup of 1983 did the Nigerian peoples decide to drop the quality of a secular state in preference for a multi-religious state. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any plebiscites on the definition of the Nigerian state since the second republic Constitution. If today there is a constitutional provision for a multi-religious state, it was arbitrarily put there by the military dictatorship of Abdulsalami Abubakar. It would be better for Obasanjo to say that Abubakar in his 1999 Constitution presented Nigeria as a multi-religious state if that is actually the case. It is very unbecoming of a president of a democratic nation to misquote the Constitution that confers on him his political authority and legitimacy. If he was in doubt about the constitutional status of the Nigerian state, Obasanjo could have unbound himself by simply saying that it was the understanding of most Nigerians that Nigeria was a multi-religious state. This has no legal effect. He would not be understood as quoting the Constitution. But to allege on the Constitution what it has not explicitly said is absolutely unconscionable for the political head of a democratic nation.
Suppose there is a consensus that there is a constitutional provision that Nigeria is a multi-religious state, does the present president of our country know the full implications of such a legal provision? If Obasanjo is arguing that the Constitution of Nigeria recognizes or should recognize the nation as a multi-religious state he better be prepared to provide state support to every little group that masquerades as a religion. In fact, all denominations and religious traditions should immediately send him their annual budgets for him to underwrite. That seems the ultimate implication of such a claim. If a nation is claiming religion or religions as part of its essential nature she must provide for what defines her essence through some active governmental apparatus. That is the meaning of government for the governed. A government that adopts a religion or religions as part of its essential nature must be ready to go the distance of sponsoring such religions and in fact regulating them. Perhaps this is the main reason why the Islamic religion in Nigeria had always sought the sponsorship of the national government either directly or indirectly. Perhaps it correctly assumed that since Islam had always been presented as the property of the government by successive Muslim heads of state of Nigeria, the federal government therefore owed the religion all the needed support in perpetuity.
The definition of a nation as a religious state, whether in the mono- or multi- category, automatically opens the Pandora's box of problems associated with states meddling into and with religions. Historically such a synergy has never been cost free on both sides of the interaction. Wiser states like the United States of America have always steered clear of meddling with religions. The genius of the American Constitution and its amendments lies in the fact that although the makers of the documents were as religious as any religious politicians that have ever lived, they managed to disentangle and liberate the state government from a gung-ho meddling in religious affairs. They knew that a state that remained ambiguous and fuzzy about its religious independence could never function properly. Religion has a very uncanny way of hobbling political governments and destroying their efficiency. But that was never clear either to the fundamentalist Muslims that drew up the 1999 Constitution or to President Obasanjo who gleeful advocates a multi-religious state of Nigeria. This is why the makers of the 1979 constitution were far wiser and superior to the few semi-literate generals who gathered in 1999 to draw up a constitution for Nigeria. Of course this is just belaboring a platitude. The difference between an elected constituent assembly and a bunch of self-promoted military generals is like day and night. Nigeria was better of a secular state of the 1979 Constitution than a multi-religious state of 1999 Constitution. Granted that the word "secular" sounds jeering and too foreign and perhaps too American for the religiously and culturally sensitive Nigerians, it gave the Nigerian state the necessary freedom and independence to deal with religious issues in a hands-off manner.
When the president was asked his personal stand on the Sharia Law and whether his administration recognized it, he shouted "of course." The phrase "of course" is commonly used as a rhetorical device to indicate a fact that should be assumed as clearly the case, in fact, as self-evident. In other words, the president believed that it should have been clear to everyone, and in fact, taken for granted by all Nigerians because of its self-evident nature that he was ab initio in favor of the implementation of the present Sharia law in Nigeria. To buttress this position, he went on in that interview to ascribe to himself the premier position in the efforts to implement Sharia in Nigeria. He claimed to have single-handedly put the Sharia Court of Appeal in the Constitution after the impasse in the Constituent Assembly in 1978. All this was to show that he was in favor of the current practice of the Sharia Law in Northern Nigeria from the beginning. But facts originating from the time the Sharia Law was first introduced in the North tend to suggest otherwise.
The formal launching of the implementation of Sharia in Zamfara State on Wednesday October 27, 1999 was met with palpable tension and little skirmishes in the North and around the nation. But Obasanjo as a person according to a BBC report then (cf. BBC Online Oct. 27, 1999) chose to remain silent to the whole situation. While the nation was boiling as a result of the Zamfara initiative, the president was in fact M.I.A (missing in action). The earliest response of his administration to the tragic developments of that period came in a very innocuous way after a Federal Executive Council meeting that was chaired by Vice President Atiku. Through the ad hoc spokesperson of the meeting, Segun Agagu, the then minister of Aviation, the Obasanjo administration claimed after it had been pressured by the press that it was "watching with keen interest the adoption of the Sharia by the Zamfara State government" (Postexpresswired, Oct. 29, 1999). Meanwhile tension mounted in Zamfara and in the other Northern states. However it would not be until the year 2000 that the Sharia-induced tension reached a fever pitch. Writing on BBC Online then, Barnaby Phillips reported that "Religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria are never far from the surface. But the decision of the State of Zamfara in the far North to introduce Sharia, or Islamic law on January 27, has brought them very much to the forefront once again". In his own assessment of the mood of the times, Dele Sobowale, in the Vanguard of Feb 26, 2000 wrote; "Since the Governor of Zamfara State Alhaji Sani announced his intention to introduce Sharia Law, the country has been set ablaze with words. Christians are up in arms, some call it treasonable felony; some fear it would lead to secession or another civil war; many more fear for their lives or the loss of their religious and fundamental human rights."
The whole pent-up feelings on the implementation of Sharia in the North exploded in Kaduna State on February 22 following an attempt to introduce the Islamic code in that highly pluralistic and self-described liberal state. Lives and property of enormous magnitude were lost in the strings of tragic events that trailed the Kaduna mayhem. The pro-Sharia Northern Muslims and their Christian counterparts faced off in a "civil war" that snuffed off the lives of thousands of innocent people. The whole crisis in Kaduna spiraled into the South where there were revenge attacks on Muslims in some Southern cities like Aba, Umuahia, Onitsha, etc, leading to enormous losses of lives and property. It was only after those incidents when more than five thousand lives had been taken that the President of Nigeria broke his silence on the Sharia issue in a nationwide broadcast. And his thinking in that broadcast of March 1, 2000 differed substantially from what he is claiming today: "I speak to you again today with a sad and heavy heart, having recently returned from a visit to Kaduna, where I saw the carnage and devastation resulting from the recent disturbances in that city…. And yet, those who were responsible for these murders claim that they were acting in defense of faith or religion. I cannot believe that any religion in this day and age can sanction the taking of innocent life…. I am sad to say, that this has been one of the worst incidents of bloodletting that this country has witnessed since the Civil War."
The primary issue here is that the president's endorsement of the Sharia Law implementation at the beginning was not a self-evident fact as he now claims. The question posed to him in this regard during the "Talking Point" interview did not deserve to be answered with "of course." In fact the Council of States Meeting on February 29, 2000 whose decision on the question of the Sharia Law was articulated in the president's broadcast of March 1 showed clearly that if the president had had a silent approval of the Sharia implementation in the North in the past he abandoned it altogether after the Kaduna-Aba incidents. From that moment he started to interpret the constitution in a way that would not permit the implementation of such aspects of the Islamic law. According to him, "The fundamental freedoms of worship and speech, and the freedom from all forms of discrimination are guaranteed to every citizen (in the Constitution). We cherish and uphold these fundamental freedoms." Furthermore, "The Penal Code currently in force in the Northern States is substantially based on Sharia Law, with the modifications that imprisonment is substituted in place of amputation of limbs, as punishment for stealing, and also as punishment for adultery instead of stoning to death." According to the president, "The Council (of States) unanimously agreed that all States that have recently adopted Sharia Law should in the meantime revert to the status quo ante. That is, Sharia, as practiced in Penal Code, continues to be practiced by all States concerned." That is to say, the Obasanjo administration was clearly opposed to the way Sharia was being implemented in Zamfara State and elsewhere in the North. To claim now that he was "of course" all for it at the beginning seems totally untrue.
But it is true that President Obasanjo in his first coming as military head of State from 1976-9 oversaw the inclusion of the Sharia Court of Appeal in the 1979 Constitution. But to assert glibly that he was the one who initiated its inclusion in that Constitution is misleading if not completely false. In fact by aligning what was achieved for the Sharia Law during his time as the head of state of Nigeria with the primitive implementation of the Sharia law in the North in the fourth republic, the president appears to be selling himself and his former administration short. What he did then for the Sharia Law was in fact noble. But what is happening now is primitive and retrogressive. The Ahmed Sani-initiative with the Sharia is a thousand steps backwards from the progressive achievements of Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa which the former administration of Obasanjo seemed to have improved upon.
First as he rightly said there was an in impasse in the Constituent Assembly that was drawing up the final version of the 1979 Constitution. A group of radical Muslims led by Shehu Shagari relentlessly fought to include Sharia Court of Appeal in the Constitution. The Christian and the non-aligned members of the assembly fought against it with all their might. The result was a grinding impasse as the president rightly said in his interview. But the then head of state, Obasanjo, with his Supreme Military Council struck a very reasonable middle ground in the imbroglio. The Sharia Court of Appeal was put in the Constitution but balanced off with its appellate equivalent of a Customary Court for the non-Muslim population of our nation. Both high courts seemed in a way to cancel each other out. But much more importantly both courts were carefully placed under the over-riding article 10 that stated succinctly that Nigeria was a secular state and therefore was religiously neutral in its state policies. But to further define the scope of the application of the Sharia Law in the 1979 Constitution, it was very clearly stated that the Penal Code that would be in force was that of the Common Law of Nigeria which in the North was based on the Sharia Law with modifications only in the areas of punishments for offenses. As the president correctly stated in his March 1, 2000 broadcast, the modifications were along the lines of substituting imprisonment for Sharia punishments such as amputation of limbs for the crime of stealing and stoning for the crime of adultery. But more importantly, all those modifications and substitutions in the Sharia punishments were integrated into the Nigerian common law by the fathers of Northern politics, Sadauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello and the Prime Minister of Nigeria, Tafawa Balewa who are being venerated in the North today as the trailblazers and heroes of the Northern leadership of Nigeria. The final outcome of the 1979 was well received by many Nigerians. It was balanced and did satisfy many of the desires of the Nigerian citizenry.
Unfortunately, the great balance, which was achieved in the 1979 Constitution, was tossed away by the fanatical drafters of the Abubakar Constitution of 1999.That opened the floodgate for the rush to implement the crudest form of the Sharia Law in most Northern states. It is very sad that the president of Nigeria who was a principal actor in striking the great balance can not seem to recognize how the current haphazard implementation of the Sharia Law in the North destroys the hard won balance of 1979 as well jeopardize the efficacy of the present Constitution and administration. First the promulgation of a parallel Penal Code in the Northern states jeopardizes the 1999 Constitution as the single legal fountain for all Nigerians. There is hardly any way one could go on implementing the Sharia Law in the way it is being done in the Northern states without violating and destroying the basic tenets of the so-called Constitution of 1999. For instance, Section 17 of 1999 Constitution is filled to the brim with all noble ideas on freedom, equality and justice, which are claimed to underlie the social order of our nation. How can some citizens enjoy the full effect of the freedom and justice guaranteed in their Constitution if they cannot even buy and sell certain merchandise of need like alcohol beverages simply because such are not acceptable in a particular religion that is practiced by some members of the citizenry? How can a Christian woman be said to enjoy equality and fairness if she cannot ride in a certain vehicle that could quickly take her to her destination simply because such has been designated for the men? Citizens are said to enjoy equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law. How can this equality before the law be realized if there are only relative standards of judgment all over the nation, even if and when such standards have been duly promulgated into law by the competent authority? How can anybody say that Nigerian citizens are equal before the law if a Muslim who steals a piece of cloth has his limbs amputated while his Christian counterpart who steals a similar item is sent to jail for three months? How can anybody say that there is a true Constitutional standard of justice when a woman caught in adultery in a Muslim state is stoned to death while her counterparts in a liberal state is only winced at and dismissed? It does not make any sense. When and if this happens, the basic tenets of the so-called Constitution is relativized and put in a serious jeopardy. However, the former Chief Justice of the Federation, Mohammed Bello produced even a far better argument than mine. Speaking as a keynote speaker in a seminar organized by Jaamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) in Kaduna in February of 2000, he said, the 1999 Constitution states in its Section 1 that "This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the federation…. If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this constitution, the Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void." According to Justice Bello, Section 38 (1) of the Constitution ensures for every person the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, whereas under Sharia, ridda is a capital offense and the offense of ridda is inconsistent within Section (1) and by virtue of Section 1 is unconstitutional."
The fact is, applying the punishments of the Sharia Law glibly as it is happening in most Northern states today destroys the whole concept of a national Constitution.
Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the president's answers to the Sharia questions during his "Talking Point" interview was his failure to acknowledge the necessary link between the implementation of the Sharia Law and the spate of violence in many cities of Nigeria. On the question of the connection between Sharia and violence the President started to forge his answers in a very disheartening way. It was very disappointing and painful to watch the president say about violence and Sharia in Nigeria "I would not Say 'no' and 'yes' because I would like to see it proven, statistics and how. Yes, there is a coincidence of timing". I do not think there is any other Nigerian who will dispute that the implementation of the Sharia Law caused tragic violence all over the North from Zamfara to Kaduna, Kano, Gombe, etc. Only a president of Nigeria will wait for expert proofs and independent statisticians to convince him of this gruesome reality that has been shocking the entire world. It is absolutely pitiful that the president of Nigeria wants experts to convince him of the reality of such a very important security issue, which he should have known upfront as a former general and head of state of Nigeria. Is he trying to tell the world that he did not have some intelligence report on the potential of the Sharia issue to lead to violence in Nigeria? I will suggest, rather than plot rigorous demographic graphs, the president's statisticians and experts can just count up the number of body bags that have been delivered to many Nigerian families since the advent of Sharia implementation in Nigeria. Perhaps a census of the dead in the Sharia violence will convince him that had he been efficient enough as president of Nigeria he could have done a better job at the beginning to try to nip the Sharia issue in the bud or to head it off through some compromises like those that exist in Kaduna today. But it is hopelessly disingenuous to embark on a mission impossible of denying a connection between violence in Nigeria and the Sharia implementation in the Northern States.
Also, it is almost criminally disingenuous that the president is describing the carnage in Kaduna in February-March 2000 as "a coincidence of timing." What coincidence? The attempt to implement Sharia in Kaduna at that point in time was surely not a coincidence. The Kaduna government was under pressure to take its cue from the other Northern states that had or were about to implement the legal system in their states. All these were known to almost everybody in Nigeria well ahead of time. It was no surprise and certainly not a coincidence then that trouble was brewing in the North. Where then is the president's coincidence? The painful aspect of his disingenous denial in that "Talking Point" interview was that the president himself in his broadcast on March 1, 2000 had said almost as much about the nature of the Kaduna mayhem. He said with regard to the carnage, "those who were responsible for these murders claim that they were acting in defense of faith or religion. I cannot believe that any religion in this day and age can sanction the taking of innocent life."
However despite his gaffe with the Sharia issue, the president did score some points in that interview. First, he carpeted with very strong words the ex-generals, namely, the Buhari's, the Babangida's, and the Abubakar's, who have been parading themselves as generals forever and untouchable ex-military heads of state. According to Obasanjo, "they are not army, they are not military because they are retired…. (But) if you talk of them as military, they are not more military as I am. If you are talking of them as former heads of state, there is nobody that is more former head of state than I am. If you are talking of them as incumbent, there is nobody more incumbent than I am." This kind of talk indicates clearly his honest effort to present himself to the Nigerian public as a man who is his own man. And I believe that the public will appreciate his ability to take on any persons irrespective of their pedigrees and give them their proper places in the Nigerian society.
Another place where the president scored big in that interview in my own view was in his declaration that his personal means of choice in the resolutions of the issues of the nation was democracy. According to him his position on any issue was not absolute unless he was a dictator. But as a president of a democratic nation, such positions of his would have to be canvassed. And even though the number one citizen of the nation, the new political dispensation in Nigeria demanded that he employs always the means of persuasion in the efforts to help his colleagues and the entire nation understand and perhaps adopt his position. This shows a clear growth in the job. The president has made a major leap in his understanding of democratic ethos and he deserves our commendation for that. We should be able to appreciate the fact that he has come a long way in his knowledge and understanding of democratic values. He can always do better of course. But we must be grateful that the president has not been static in his old habits of dictatorship.
However, as the president continues to make these necessary adjustments in his understanding of democracy, as he continues to grow on the job, he must realize that the judgment of his second-time as Nigeria's president will not be based on his personal growth but on the amount of peace, security and the over all economic and social well being of our nation. For now he must realize that his over all performance grade can hardly earn him anything better than a "C-". But he could improve on this grade before the judgment day at the polls of 2003 by restoring security and stability in Nigerian. I do not think and will never believe that his unvarnished and ill-advised endorsement of the dangerously divisive Sharia Law in that BBC interview will improve his grade any bit before the overly wary Nigerian electorate.
ALSO BY AUTHOR
Ojukwu sparkles, Obasanjo flops
The ongoing absurdity in Anambra State
Igbo quest for political relevance
Chinua Achebe in Nigeria's Crosshairs
The bane of Nigerian legislators
Help, Nigerian democracy dying!
President Obasanjo's leadership of Nigeria
Toasting Catholic University of Nigeria
The Ojukwu Enigma in Nigeria
Soyinka: Paging our National Sage
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he confession could never have been more shocking neither could the revelation have been more tweaking and unreal. His composure in that confrontation with a real and a virtual global audience on telephone and cyberspace seemed absolutely magical. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it was possible for some us in far away USA, Europe, Asia and Australia to watch the cybercast of the whole interview live. The occasion was a British Broadcasting Corporation call-in program "Talking Point" that was being staged at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, by a BBC journalist, Robin Lustig. And there was President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his sedated and recollected self, gleefully taking credit, and in fact, boasting about having been the one that first established the controversial Islamic Sharia in the Nigerian constitution. He spoke with such zest as if his Sharia accomplishments in 1979 became a major milestone in Nigeria's phantom acceleration towards a modern democracy. The whole situation looked every inch like a scene from a star trek movie with Obasanjo the alien playing a Nigeria's president from Mars who was visiting his constituency for the first time and ignorantly taking credit for both the good and the bad in the nation.
The scene of Obasanjo's Sharia confessions struck me like a meteorite from the high blue skies. In fact I began immediately to second-guess my senses. Was I hearing Mr. President correctly? Does the president of Nigeria know what he is talking about? Is he in a dream, in a daze or under some influence? Is he actually taking the credit for the monster-like face of the dangerous Sharia in Nigeria? Is Mr. President also going to take credit for inflicting all the tragedies, horrendous losses of innocent lives and property, societal upheaval and all what not, which the retrogressive implementation of the fanatical Islamic law has been visiting on the Nigerian nation? I wondered!
But why has the president of Nigeria waited this long to declare his support for the fundamentalist Islamic system of justice? Is this u-turn an essential part of his campaign strategy for re-election in 2003? Perhaps he has suddenly realized that he would have to get the bulk of the Northern votes to win a second term in office. Hence he has to reverse himself 180 degrees to endorse a dubious system of justice he had harshly criticized in the past? But will his new claim of being the Nigerian Sharia initiator help him reclaim the allegiance of the North and head off the challenge of Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara State who should be up and running for the presidency of Nigeria on the winning platform of the Sharia Law? What political calculation is Obasanjo doing with the embrace of such a contentious and divisive issue as Sharia in Nigeria? What does this about-face of the president on the Sharia palaver portend for Nigeria at large?
Furthermore, why has the president not gone on national radio and television to announce to the whole world his full support for the implementation of this legal system in Nigeria? Why has he not embarked on a public enlightenment campaign to persuade and convince Nigerians why this system of justice is needed to complement the one we have had since independence? Such an action would have long put things in their proper perspectives for the many Nigerians who are worried sick with what they see as a blind romance with Islamic fundamentalism that may ultimately spell doom for the unity of the Nigerian nation? How many Nigerians would have to die before the president realized that a little clarity on the issue of Sharia from his own side would surely help lower the rhetoric and tensions that have been attending this issue since the inception of his administration?
What about the president's well-publicized negative reactions against Sharia's implementation in the early days of his administration? Knowing in his heart that he was the one that initiated its inclusion in the Constitution and implementation in Nigeria, why did he go about telling the world that the introduction of Sharia in some states of the North was a calculated political action by some Northern elite to sabotage his administration and destroy the nascent democracy of Nigeria? How has the Sharia Law transmuted in the president's mind from being a force against democracy to an instrument for a democratic up-building? Is the president now going to take back one after the other all his former criticisms of the Northern governments that implemented the Sharia law? Is he going to reward Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara State with Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria [CFR] for resuscitating and picking up the Sharia cause from where he had left it in 1979? Obasanjo's boldface endorsement of the Sharia law implementation in his "Talking Point" interview brought a major confusion in my mind and perhaps in the minds of many other Nigerians. However the northern interest newspaper, the Daily Trust, could contain its joy over the president's late endorsement of the Sharia implementation in the Northern States (cf. Daily Trust, Feb 18, 2002). But somehow I kept telling myself that it could not be true that the born-again president of Nigeria was lending such a heavy presidential support to a system of justice that clearly undermined all principles of national cohesion and civilized living.
However as I revisited the interview prior to my beginning this commentary, I found to my utter bewilderment that Obasanjo's voice had not changed and his words had not been altered. The current president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo had in fact on that bright Sunday afternoon February 17, 2002, gloated in having been the first to unleash the draconian Sharia Law on Nigerians. And as it was perhaps expected in an interview of that nature, President Obasanjo did not disappoint with his idiosyncratic antics and tortured way of rendering the English Language. As usual the answers were belabored and hard to extract from his mouth. Words painfully dripped off his lips with the time lags of an hourglass. But to his credit the man was uncharacteristically forthcoming. His answers were candid and direct. The president exemplified candor, peace, composure and self-confidence all through the rather unfriendly interview. As he spoke I continued to say "yes the president of our nation should speak with this level of comfort all the time". He managed to maintain some level of humor and congeniality with his invisible callers and with his BBC interviewer whom he petted with his first name Robin most of the time. It was quite refreshing to see an Olusegun that was a little humorous and different from the curse-spitting and shut-up-barking Obasanjo. Except for his contoured way of answering questions, one can say that he was beautifully packaged for that interview. Bravo to his handlers! After Lustig's flowery citation of the president, calls and emails started to pour in from all parts of the globe. It did not take long before there would be the star exchange of the day between President Obasanjo on the one hand and Lustig with his callers on the other. One Celestine Onwuka from Santiago, Chile, called in to ask a question. Lustig lost his call but got the germ of his question and posed it to the president: "Why do you let Sharia Law exist in a secular state?" Obasanjo thundered right back: "We are not a secular but a multi-religious state, that is what we call ourselves in the constitution." Lustig reads to him an email question from Frances Gwandi in Cameroun: "What is your personal stand on Sharia Law and does your administration recognize it?" Shockingly Obasanjo replied, "Of course. I was the first, when I was Head of State, who put Sharia Law Court of Appeal in the Constitution of Nigeria. It is part of our Constitution. Sharia is part of the life and soul of a Muslim. In 1978 we had a Constituent Assembly, which reached an impasse on Sharia Court of Appeal, Federal Court of Appeal or no Sharia Court of Appeal. Because at the state level every state that feel that they have enough Muslims in the population, they have Sharia Law." Lustig goes on: "Do you see any connection between its extension and application to many Northern states and the increase in violence between Christian and Muslim communities in Nigeria?" Answering the president begins to hair-split in an awkwardly lawyerly way; "I would not say "No" and "Yes," because I would like to see it proven, statistics and how. Yes, there is a coincidence of timing. Take Kaduna where we had the first blowout. For one or two reasons, Kaduna has always been a hotbed. Jos had been quiet for many many years. There always have been natives, settlers. (The) Natives were mainly Christians (the) settlers were mainly Mulsims. That also has been there for many many years." Lustig cuts in and interjects, "There were 5000 people (who) have been killed in Jos in September alone." But the president countered with his exasperating rigmaroles; "Maybe Sharia has accentuated political violence, maybe not. But I will want experts to look at what has happened and be able to say that with statistics. The issue of Sharia, which I said and which I still believe is that for a Muslim, Sharia is for Muslim what the Ten Commandments is for a Christian." Lustig presses him further: "As a Christian do you not see a problem with a system of law which specifies the amputation of a hand for theft, the stoning of a woman to death for adultery?" Answering President Obasanjo says; "not because of my Christian, out of my own humaneness and humanity, I will not want to see a woman or man stoned to death. If a woman would be killed, I would want a less painful death for her offence. That is my choice." Not giving up, Lustig pushed even further: "And do you, as head of state, reserve the right to see that your choice is observed?" Cleverly Obasanjo provided perhaps his best answer in the whole interview: "My choice in a democracy can only be canvassed. In a dictatorship, my choice of course must be carried. In a democracy, it can only be canvassed. If my choice is not carried, then it is not carried. I think that is what democracy is about."
This short clip of the marathon BBC interview with Obasanjo in my view provides a great illumination on the workings of the inner mind of the personality of the president of Nigeria. I fear greatly that our president may neither have a full understanding of the Constitution under which he is running Nigeria nor have a true grasp of the dynamics of the contemporary Nigerian situation. If the views he espoused in the interview were all that he knew about Nigeria, if they provided a road-map to the way he has been and wishes to continue running Nigeria, we can say almost off hand that our country's salvation is not in sight. We still do have a very long way to go before we can begin to understand who we are and what factors and processes will help us realize the full potentials of our nation.
First, the president denies that Nigeria is a secular state. According to him "we are not a secular state but a multi-religious state. That is what we call ourselves in the Constitution." The two operative words here are "secular" and "multi-religious." And the major claim is that the citizens of Nigeria made a conscious choice from these two concepts at a particular point in the development of the current Constitution. We will come to this later. After Obasanjo's interview I made a quick search of the two major concepts of his claim in the Constitution Abubakar wrote and handed over to Nigerians before leaving office in 1999. I was not quite surprised to see that there is nothing like article 10 of the 1979 Constitution in the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria. If there was any achievement of the neo-fanatical military regime that handed over power to Obasanjo it was the obliteration from the 1999 Constitution a specific article that prescribed secularity and religious independence as an essential character of the Nigerian nation. But my search for the provision of a "multi-religious" Nigeria espoused by President Obasanjo did not yield anything either. I concede that my search had not been thorough in any way. But I did not find it in the two specific chapters where it was supposed to have been explicitly included, namely, Chapter 11, which talks of "Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy "and Chapter 1V that discourses "Fundamental Rights" of Nigerians. Also I did not find it in the chapter [VII] and places [Sections 260 & 275] Ahmed Sani had quoted in 1999 as giving him the right to initiate the implementation of the Sharia Law in Zamfara State (cf. Postexpresswired, Oct. 29, 1999). I am not aware that the legislature had made any additional laws in this regard. I am assuming that there has not been any further legislation on human rights and the fundamental objectives of the Nigerian state dealing with the essential nature of the Nigerian state since the inception of democracy in the Nigerian fourth republic. A question then arises, where does the president of Nigeria get the multi-religious concept as a constitutional definition of the Nigerian state? Granted that he does not constitutionally have the judicial power to definitively interpret constitutional provisions, is the president trying to give a new interpretation to the numerous constitutional recognitions of religious differences of the present-day Nigeria? To his credit there seems to be an implicit recognition of the multi-religious nature of Nigeria in the many provisions proscribing discrimination on the grounds of religion and other differences (Section 15 [2, 3cd]; Section17 [3b], passim). But how does the president arrive at the determination that the 1999 constitution prefers a multi-religious state to a secular state?
Second, the president alleges in the interview that we the Nigerian peoples (agreed to) call ourselves multi-religious in the 1999 Constitution. Let us assume that there is a place in the current Constitution where the provision of a multi-religious Nigerian state is hidden which I could not find. However it is absolutely untrue to claim that the Nigerian peoples gave themselves such a characteristic in the present Constitution. Though there may be implicit recognition of that reality in every facet of Nigeria's life, it does not elevate it to a constitutional provision. At no point in time since the military coup of 1983 did the Nigerian peoples decide to drop the quality of a secular state in preference for a multi-religious state. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any plebiscites on the definition of the Nigerian state since the second republic Constitution. If today there is a constitutional provision for a multi-religious state, it was arbitrarily put there by the military dictatorship of Abdulsalami Abubakar. It would be better for Obasanjo to say that Abubakar in his 1999 Constitution presented Nigeria as a multi-religious state if that is actually the case. It is very unbecoming of a president of a democratic nation to misquote the Constitution that confers on him his political authority and legitimacy. If he was in doubt about the constitutional status of the Nigerian state, Obasanjo could have unbound himself by simply saying that it was the understanding of most Nigerians that Nigeria was a multi-religious state. This has no legal effect. He would not be understood as quoting the Constitution. But to allege on the Constitution what it has not explicitly said is absolutely unconscionable for the political head of a democratic nation.
Suppose there is a consensus that there is a constitutional provision that Nigeria is a multi-religious state, does the present president of our country know the full implications of such a legal provision? If Obasanjo is arguing that the Constitution of Nigeria recognizes or should recognize the nation as a multi-religious state he better be prepared to provide state support to every little group that masquerades as a religion. In fact, all denominations and religious traditions should immediately send him their annual budgets for him to underwrite. That seems the ultimate implication of such a claim. If a nation is claiming religion or religions as part of its essential nature she must provide for what defines her essence through some active governmental apparatus. That is the meaning of government for the governed. A government that adopts a religion or religions as part of its essential nature must be ready to go the distance of sponsoring such religions and in fact regulating them. Perhaps this is the main reason why the Islamic religion in Nigeria had always sought the sponsorship of the national government either directly or indirectly. Perhaps it correctly assumed that since Islam had always been presented as the property of the government by successive Muslim heads of state of Nigeria, the federal government therefore owed the religion all the needed support in perpetuity.
The definition of a nation as a religious state, whether in the mono- or multi- category, automatically opens the Pandora's box of problems associated with states meddling into and with religions. Historically such a synergy has never been cost free on both sides of the interaction. Wiser states like the United States of America have always steered clear of meddling with religions. The genius of the American Constitution and its amendments lies in the fact that although the makers of the documents were as religious as any religious politicians that have ever lived, they managed to disentangle and liberate the state government from a gung-ho meddling in religious affairs. They knew that a state that remained ambiguous and fuzzy about its religious independence could never function properly. Religion has a very uncanny way of hobbling political governments and destroying their efficiency. But that was never clear either to the fundamentalist Muslims that drew up the 1999 Constitution or to President Obasanjo who gleeful advocates a multi-religious state of Nigeria. This is why the makers of the 1979 constitution were far wiser and superior to the few semi-literate generals who gathered in 1999 to draw up a constitution for Nigeria. Of course this is just belaboring a platitude. The difference between an elected constituent assembly and a bunch of self-promoted military generals is like day and night. Nigeria was better of a secular state of the 1979 Constitution than a multi-religious state of 1999 Constitution. Granted that the word "secular" sounds jeering and too foreign and perhaps too American for the religiously and culturally sensitive Nigerians, it gave the Nigerian state the necessary freedom and independence to deal with religious issues in a hands-off manner.
When the president was asked his personal stand on the Sharia Law and whether his administration recognized it, he shouted "of course." The phrase "of course" is commonly used as a rhetorical device to indicate a fact that should be assumed as clearly the case, in fact, as self-evident. In other words, the president believed that it should have been clear to everyone, and in fact, taken for granted by all Nigerians because of its self-evident nature that he was ab initio in favor of the implementation of the present Sharia law in Nigeria. To buttress this position, he went on in that interview to ascribe to himself the premier position in the efforts to implement Sharia in Nigeria. He claimed to have single-handedly put the Sharia Court of Appeal in the Constitution after the impasse in the Constituent Assembly in 1978. All this was to show that he was in favor of the current practice of the Sharia Law in Northern Nigeria from the beginning. But facts originating from the time the Sharia Law was first introduced in the North tend to suggest otherwise.
The formal launching of the implementation of Sharia in Zamfara State on Wednesday October 27, 1999 was met with palpable tension and little skirmishes in the North and around the nation. But Obasanjo as a person according to a BBC report then (cf. BBC Online Oct. 27, 1999) chose to remain silent to the whole situation. While the nation was boiling as a result of the Zamfara initiative, the president was in fact M.I.A (missing in action). The earliest response of his administration to the tragic developments of that period came in a very innocuous way after a Federal Executive Council meeting that was chaired by Vice President Atiku. Through the ad hoc spokesperson of the meeting, Segun Agagu, the then minister of Aviation, the Obasanjo administration claimed after it had been pressured by the press that it was "watching with keen interest the adoption of the Sharia by the Zamfara State government" (Postexpresswired, Oct. 29, 1999). Meanwhile tension mounted in Zamfara and in the other Northern states. However it would not be until the year 2000 that the Sharia-induced tension reached a fever pitch. Writing on BBC Online then, Barnaby Phillips reported that "Religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria are never far from the surface. But the decision of the State of Zamfara in the far North to introduce Sharia, or Islamic law on January 27, has brought them very much to the forefront once again". In his own assessment of the mood of the times, Dele Sobowale, in the Vanguard of Feb 26, 2000 wrote; "Since the Governor of Zamfara State Alhaji Sani announced his intention to introduce Sharia Law, the country has been set ablaze with words. Christians are up in arms, some call it treasonable felony; some fear it would lead to secession or another civil war; many more fear for their lives or the loss of their religious and fundamental human rights."
The whole pent-up feelings on the implementation of Sharia in the North exploded in Kaduna State on February 22 following an attempt to introduce the Islamic code in that highly pluralistic and self-described liberal state. Lives and property of enormous magnitude were lost in the strings of tragic events that trailed the Kaduna mayhem. The pro-Sharia Northern Muslims and their Christian counterparts faced off in a "civil war" that snuffed off the lives of thousands of innocent people. The whole crisis in Kaduna spiraled into the South where there were revenge attacks on Muslims in some Southern cities like Aba, Umuahia, Onitsha, etc, leading to enormous losses of lives and property. It was only after those incidents when more than five thousand lives had been taken that the President of Nigeria broke his silence on the Sharia issue in a nationwide broadcast. And his thinking in that broadcast of March 1, 2000 differed substantially from what he is claiming today: "I speak to you again today with a sad and heavy heart, having recently returned from a visit to Kaduna, where I saw the carnage and devastation resulting from the recent disturbances in that city…. And yet, those who were responsible for these murders claim that they were acting in defense of faith or religion. I cannot believe that any religion in this day and age can sanction the taking of innocent life…. I am sad to say, that this has been one of the worst incidents of bloodletting that this country has witnessed since the Civil War."
The primary issue here is that the president's endorsement of the Sharia Law implementation at the beginning was not a self-evident fact as he now claims. The question posed to him in this regard during the "Talking Point" interview did not deserve to be answered with "of course." In fact the Council of States Meeting on February 29, 2000 whose decision on the question of the Sharia Law was articulated in the president's broadcast of March 1 showed clearly that if the president had had a silent approval of the Sharia implementation in the North in the past he abandoned it altogether after the Kaduna-Aba incidents. From that moment he started to interpret the constitution in a way that would not permit the implementation of such aspects of the Islamic law. According to him, "The fundamental freedoms of worship and speech, and the freedom from all forms of discrimination are guaranteed to every citizen (in the Constitution). We cherish and uphold these fundamental freedoms." Furthermore, "The Penal Code currently in force in the Northern States is substantially based on Sharia Law, with the modifications that imprisonment is substituted in place of amputation of limbs, as punishment for stealing, and also as punishment for adultery instead of stoning to death." According to the president, "The Council (of States) unanimously agreed that all States that have recently adopted Sharia Law should in the meantime revert to the status quo ante. That is, Sharia, as practiced in Penal Code, continues to be practiced by all States concerned." That is to say, the Obasanjo administration was clearly opposed to the way Sharia was being implemented in Zamfara State and elsewhere in the North. To claim now that he was "of course" all for it at the beginning seems totally untrue.
But it is true that President Obasanjo in his first coming as military head of State from 1976-9 oversaw the inclusion of the Sharia Court of Appeal in the 1979 Constitution. But to assert glibly that he was the one who initiated its inclusion in that Constitution is misleading if not completely false. In fact by aligning what was achieved for the Sharia Law during his time as the head of state of Nigeria with the primitive implementation of the Sharia law in the North in the fourth republic, the president appears to be selling himself and his former administration short. What he did then for the Sharia Law was in fact noble. But what is happening now is primitive and retrogressive. The Ahmed Sani-initiative with the Sharia is a thousand steps backwards from the progressive achievements of Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa which the former administration of Obasanjo seemed to have improved upon.
First as he rightly said there was an in impasse in the Constituent Assembly that was drawing up the final version of the 1979 Constitution. A group of radical Muslims led by Shehu Shagari relentlessly fought to include Sharia Court of Appeal in the Constitution. The Christian and the non-aligned members of the assembly fought against it with all their might. The result was a grinding impasse as the president rightly said in his interview. But the then head of state, Obasanjo, with his Supreme Military Council struck a very reasonable middle ground in the imbroglio. The Sharia Court of Appeal was put in the Constitution but balanced off with its appellate equivalent of a Customary Court for the non-Muslim population of our nation. Both high courts seemed in a way to cancel each other out. But much more importantly both courts were carefully placed under the over-riding article 10 that stated succinctly that Nigeria was a secular state and therefore was religiously neutral in its state policies. But to further define the scope of the application of the Sharia Law in the 1979 Constitution, it was very clearly stated that the Penal Code that would be in force was that of the Common Law of Nigeria which in the North was based on the Sharia Law with modifications only in the areas of punishments for offenses. As the president correctly stated in his March 1, 2000 broadcast, the modifications were along the lines of substituting imprisonment for Sharia punishments such as amputation of limbs for the crime of stealing and stoning for the crime of adultery. But more importantly, all those modifications and substitutions in the Sharia punishments were integrated into the Nigerian common law by the fathers of Northern politics, Sadauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello and the Prime Minister of Nigeria, Tafawa Balewa who are being venerated in the North today as the trailblazers and heroes of the Northern leadership of Nigeria. The final outcome of the 1979 was well received by many Nigerians. It was balanced and did satisfy many of the desires of the Nigerian citizenry.
Unfortunately, the great balance, which was achieved in the 1979 Constitution, was tossed away by the fanatical drafters of the Abubakar Constitution of 1999.That opened the floodgate for the rush to implement the crudest form of the Sharia Law in most Northern states. It is very sad that the president of Nigeria who was a principal actor in striking the great balance can not seem to recognize how the current haphazard implementation of the Sharia Law in the North destroys the hard won balance of 1979 as well jeopardize the efficacy of the present Constitution and administration. First the promulgation of a parallel Penal Code in the Northern states jeopardizes the 1999 Constitution as the single legal fountain for all Nigerians. There is hardly any way one could go on implementing the Sharia Law in the way it is being done in the Northern states without violating and destroying the basic tenets of the so-called Constitution of 1999. For instance, Section 17 of 1999 Constitution is filled to the brim with all noble ideas on freedom, equality and justice, which are claimed to underlie the social order of our nation. How can some citizens enjoy the full effect of the freedom and justice guaranteed in their Constitution if they cannot even buy and sell certain merchandise of need like alcohol beverages simply because such are not acceptable in a particular religion that is practiced by some members of the citizenry? How can a Christian woman be said to enjoy equality and fairness if she cannot ride in a certain vehicle that could quickly take her to her destination simply because such has been designated for the men? Citizens are said to enjoy equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law. How can this equality before the law be realized if there are only relative standards of judgment all over the nation, even if and when such standards have been duly promulgated into law by the competent authority? How can anybody say that Nigerian citizens are equal before the law if a Muslim who steals a piece of cloth has his limbs amputated while his Christian counterpart who steals a similar item is sent to jail for three months? How can anybody say that there is a true Constitutional standard of justice when a woman caught in adultery in a Muslim state is stoned to death while her counterparts in a liberal state is only winced at and dismissed? It does not make any sense. When and if this happens, the basic tenets of the so-called Constitution is relativized and put in a serious jeopardy. However, the former Chief Justice of the Federation, Mohammed Bello produced even a far better argument than mine. Speaking as a keynote speaker in a seminar organized by Jaamatu Nasril Islam (JNI) in Kaduna in February of 2000, he said, the 1999 Constitution states in its Section 1 that "This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the federation…. If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this constitution, the Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void." According to Justice Bello, Section 38 (1) of the Constitution ensures for every person the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, whereas under Sharia, ridda is a capital offense and the offense of ridda is inconsistent within Section (1) and by virtue of Section 1 is unconstitutional."
The fact is, applying the punishments of the Sharia Law glibly as it is happening in most Northern states today destroys the whole concept of a national Constitution.
Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the president's answers to the Sharia questions during his "Talking Point" interview was his failure to acknowledge the necessary link between the implementation of the Sharia Law and the spate of violence in many cities of Nigeria. On the question of the connection between Sharia and violence the President started to forge his answers in a very disheartening way. It was very disappointing and painful to watch the president say about violence and Sharia in Nigeria "I would not Say 'no' and 'yes' because I would like to see it proven, statistics and how. Yes, there is a coincidence of timing". I do not think there is any other Nigerian who will dispute that the implementation of the Sharia Law caused tragic violence all over the North from Zamfara to Kaduna, Kano, Gombe, etc. Only a president of Nigeria will wait for expert proofs and independent statisticians to convince him of this gruesome reality that has been shocking the entire world. It is absolutely pitiful that the president of Nigeria wants experts to convince him of the reality of such a very important security issue, which he should have known upfront as a former general and head of state of Nigeria. Is he trying to tell the world that he did not have some intelligence report on the potential of the Sharia issue to lead to violence in Nigeria? I will suggest, rather than plot rigorous demographic graphs, the president's statisticians and experts can just count up the number of body bags that have been delivered to many Nigerian families since the advent of Sharia implementation in Nigeria. Perhaps a census of the dead in the Sharia violence will convince him that had he been efficient enough as president of Nigeria he could have done a better job at the beginning to try to nip the Sharia issue in the bud or to head it off through some compromises like those that exist in Kaduna today. But it is hopelessly disingenuous to embark on a mission impossible of denying a connection between violence in Nigeria and the Sharia implementation in the Northern States.
Also, it is almost criminally disingenuous that the president is describing the carnage in Kaduna in February-March 2000 as "a coincidence of timing." What coincidence? The attempt to implement Sharia in Kaduna at that point in time was surely not a coincidence. The Kaduna government was under pressure to take its cue from the other Northern states that had or were about to implement the legal system in their states. All these were known to almost everybody in Nigeria well ahead of time. It was no surprise and certainly not a coincidence then that trouble was brewing in the North. Where then is the president's coincidence? The painful aspect of his disingenous denial in that "Talking Point" interview was that the president himself in his broadcast on March 1, 2000 had said almost as much about the nature of the Kaduna mayhem. He said with regard to the carnage, "those who were responsible for these murders claim that they were acting in defense of faith or religion. I cannot believe that any religion in this day and age can sanction the taking of innocent life."
However despite his gaffe with the Sharia issue, the president did score some points in that interview. First, he carpeted with very strong words the ex-generals, namely, the Buhari's, the Babangida's, and the Abubakar's, who have been parading themselves as generals forever and untouchable ex-military heads of state. According to Obasanjo, "they are not army, they are not military because they are retired…. (But) if you talk of them as military, they are not more military as I am. If you are talking of them as former heads of state, there is nobody that is more former head of state than I am. If you are talking of them as incumbent, there is nobody more incumbent than I am." This kind of talk indicates clearly his honest effort to present himself to the Nigerian public as a man who is his own man. And I believe that the public will appreciate his ability to take on any persons irrespective of their pedigrees and give them their proper places in the Nigerian society.
Another place where the president scored big in that interview in my own view was in his declaration that his personal means of choice in the resolutions of the issues of the nation was democracy. According to him his position on any issue was not absolute unless he was a dictator. But as a president of a democratic nation, such positions of his would have to be canvassed. And even though the number one citizen of the nation, the new political dispensation in Nigeria demanded that he employs always the means of persuasion in the efforts to help his colleagues and the entire nation understand and perhaps adopt his position. This shows a clear growth in the job. The president has made a major leap in his understanding of democratic ethos and he deserves our commendation for that. We should be able to appreciate the fact that he has come a long way in his knowledge and understanding of democratic values. He can always do better of course. But we must be grateful that the president has not been static in his old habits of dictatorship.
However, as the president continues to make these necessary adjustments in his understanding of democracy, as he continues to grow on the job, he must realize that the judgment of his second-time as Nigeria's president will not be based on his personal growth but on the amount of peace, security and the over all economic and social well being of our nation. For now he must realize that his over all performance grade can hardly earn him anything better than a "C-". But he could improve on this grade before the judgment day at the polls of 2003 by restoring security and stability in Nigerian. I do not think and will never believe that his unvarnished and ill-advised endorsement of the dangerously divisive Sharia Law in that BBC interview will improve his grade any bit before the overly wary Nigerian electorate.
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