2.6 The Emergence of “Ethno-Religious” Conflicts in Kaduna State
2.6.3 Sharia Conflicts of 2000
Weimann (2010) argues that in pre-colonial northern Nigeria, the application of Islamic law was the most obvious demonstration of the extent to which a ruler upheld Islam. Thus, application of Islamic law in modern northern Nigeria become a symbol of the region’s political and religious autonomy (Weimann, 2010). When the British conquered the region, they retained the Islamic justice system and treated it as a system of customary/native law, charging native courts to dispense the native laws and customs that existed in the area as long as it was not “repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience”, and native law and custom “includes Moslem law”
(Ostien, 2007:171). British authorities were also aware of the fears of Christians and non-Hausa- Fulani minorities and the differing opinions over Sharia application in the region. Knowing this threatened the unity of the entire country, they set up, in 1958, the Willinks Commission to
“ascertain the facts about the fears of minorities in any part of Nigeria and propose means of allaying those fears whether well or ill founded” (Ojo, 2012:58).
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Minorities argued to the commission that Sharia was a tool used to marginalize them (Bolaji, 2013), and Southern Kaduna minorities tabled further complaints including that the “Hausa- Fulani were contemptuous of them and called them arna meaning ‘pagans’ or ‘infidels’” (Abdu and Umar, 2002:89). The commission’s recommendations referred some of the complaints back to regional authorities to address. This led to the adoption, in 1959, of the Penal Code for the Northern Region based on the Penal Codes of India (1860) and Sudan (1899) (Weimann, 2010).
The code was largely English with certain provisions based on Islamic criminal law, and was inherited by all the states that emerged from the Northern Region of from 1966, including Kaduna created in 1975 (Weimann, 2010).
This compromise was, however, dissatisfactory for some Muslims as manifested after independence. At the sittings of Nigeria’s new constitution drafting committee from 1978 and National Assembly from 1978, the issue of Sharia constituted “the most contentious and divisive debate” (Bienen, 1986:51). There were also heated debates in the 1989 and 1994 constituent assemblies but, in all cases, debates were ended by military rulers who intervened to maintain the status quo (Weimann, 2010). Northern Nigerian Muslims and activists advocated for a federal Sharia court of appeal for Muslims, which would take a middle position between the Sharia courts of appeal of northern states and the Supreme Court of Nigeria (Bienen, 1986).
Practitioners of indigenous religions and Christians strongly fought against this motion on the grounds that it violated the secular status of Nigeria and marked the beginning of an islamisation of the country (Falola and Heaton, 2008). Joseph Kenny (1996) posits that the Sharia advocacy was another manifestation of the manipulation of religion by politicians because there was not much desire among Muslims in the country for life under strict Sharia restrictions. Yet, because of the symbolic meaning of Sharia, politicians who advance the cause get votes (Kenny, 1996).
The re-emergence of the Sharia debate, which resulted in violent altercations and the most lasting division between Nigerian Christians and Muslims, especially in Kaduna, was at the end of military rule in 1998 when general elections to usher in the fourth republic were announced.
Ahmed Sani, a governorship candidate for Zamfara state promised “religious reforms” if elected (Weimann, 2010). This gained him popular support, but more importantly, it also gave rise to a Muslim popular movement which put pressure on eleven other northern states to follow suit (Weimann, 2010). This move by Sani and other politicians is widely seen as purely political, and
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an exploitation of the already growing rift between Christians and Muslims nationwide.
However, many Muslims, especially advocates of the reform, understood it to be an overdue move towards decolonization and expulsion of unacceptable innovations in Nigeria’s Islamic life and society. They also believed it would improve security, address corruption and moral decadence, which were the result of western cultural influence and loss of Islamic values (Miles, 2003; Weimann, 2010).
In addition to the many anti-implementation arguments, Kaduna Christians argued that Sharia implementation was a move to force Islam on non-Muslims in the state and to use state resources for promotion of Islam (Paden, 2005). Despite efforts by the government to control the heightening of tension during the rallies and protests by supporters and opponents of Sharia implementation, highly intense violence between Christians and Muslims broke out in February and May 2000 (Ukiwo, 2003). Southern Kaduna members of the State House of Assembly further threatened the House with secession if it went ahead to implement Sharia across the state.
Thus, as a compromise, and to accommodate all people in the state, a tripartite court system was adopted: magistrate courts were retained, area courts in areas with high non-Muslim population became customary courts and, in areas with high Muslim populations, Sharia courts (Ukiwo, 2003). In parts of the Kaduna metropole and other major towns with mixed populations, religious laws were forbidden (Weimann, 2010). Furthermore, the state governor, unlike in some Sharia states, accepted that restrictions such as those imposed on the sale and consumption of alcohol would not apply to Christians in the state (Paden, 2005).
The fact that conflict occurred in Kaduna over Sharia law despite its substantial Christian and non-Hausa-Fulani population gave rise to a wave of fear, longstanding suspicion and heightened anxieties of Christians in other Middle Belt states where Sharia had not been proposed. The conflict also gave rise to reprisal attacks in other states (Ukiwo, 2003). One effect of the conflict in Kaduna is the polarity it dramatically heightened in residence patterns within and outside Kaduna metropolis. Christians and Muslims continued to relocate to areas where their respective ethno-religious group is dominant, except for some areas with seemingly even distribution of Christians and Muslims (Gandu, 2011; Harris, 2011). John Paden noted that by “2002, residents were describing particular areas of Kaduna as 100 percent Christian or 100 percent Muslim”
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(2005:172).8 This reduced contact between Christians and Muslims increased mutual suspicion which fueled grave crises afterwards, such as the 2002 Miss World conflict and the 2011 post- election conflicts (ICG, 2010; Paden, 2005).
2.6.4 2011 Post-Election Violence and After
The contest for Nigerian presidency between Goodluck Jonathan, who was a Christian from the Niger-Delta region, and Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, again divided Nigerians along the lines of religion and ethnicity in 2011. When Jonathan emerged as the president, there were protests in northern Nigeria by supporters of Buhari alleging that the elections were rigged. This soon turned into violence (Human Rights Watch, 2003). The Human Rights Watch’s report on the conflict observes that rioters were initially Hausa-Fulani Muslims who attacked properties of prominent members of their own religion and ethnicity that they considered to be loyal to the winning party (PDP), as well as police and electoral commission offices (HRW, 2003: Orji and Uzodi, 2012). In Kaduna state, the violence moved from attacks on Hausa-Fulani Muslims by mobs of the same identity to violence between Christians and Muslims (Bekoe, 2011). Christians in Southern Kaduna were reported to have also attacked and expelled many rural Fulani pastoralists from that part of the state (Human Rights Watch, 2010).
The severity of the conflicts in Kaduna have been linked again to past animosities between Southern Kaduna and Hausa-Fulani in the state, and the tension caused by the vehement resistance by some Muslims to the governorship candidacy of Patrick Yakowa, a Christian, leading to the most inflammatory electoral contest in the state since its creation (Bolaji, 2013;
Orji and Uzodi, 2012).
Kaduna, since the post-election violence of 2011, has seen several bombings of places of worship and other public places by suspected members of the Boko Haram group.9 But what has aggravated ethno-religious relations even more are the dozens of attacks on Christian rural settlements, and the evidence suggesting that Fulani herdsmen were responsible for the “apparent revenge attacks” (Human Rights Watch, 2010:110). The persistence of these attacks in Southern Kaduna has prompted involvement of civil society organizations that, together with several
8 The Kaduna state governor, Ramalan Yero, in 2013, lamented this division of Kaduna almost into two neat halves separated by the bridge in Kaduna city, and some consequences such as how recently Muslim and Christians children rarely attend the same schools. http://www.informationng.com/2013/02/kaduna-state-gov-laments- muslimschristians-dichotomy-sues-for-peace-unity.html
9 Example of news reports on the explosions can be found here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28447204
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activists and some politicians, have attempted to end the mass killings. Southern Kaduna groups have explored avenues such as digital media to challenge what they perceive as premeditated attempts to decimate them. But also, the 2011 elections generally saw a nation-wide social media explosion that changed people’s participation in the electoral processes as well as the conflicts that ensued. This constitutes another major historical moment for interreligious relations in which the significance of digital media is heightened. This is further discussed in the next section.