Legal framework on freedom of religion and implementation
Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa with more than 200 million inhabitants, the largest continental economy, and a leading oil producer. With a parliamentary democratic system of government, the country is organised as a federal republic with 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory in Abuja.
The 1999 Constitution prevents the Government of the Federation, or of a state, from adopting any religion as state religion (Article 10) and proposes religious tolerance as part of the national ethics in state policies (Article 23). It enshrines the principles of non-discrimination on religious grounds (Article 15.2), equal treatment regardless of religion (Article 42.1), and obliges political parties to open their membership to any Nigerian citizen irrespective of religion (Article 222.b) and not to hold any name, symbol, or logo with religious connotations (Article 222.e).
The constitution also guarantees the right of every person to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.” (Article 38.1). Article 38.2 says that no one may be compelled to participate in religious instruction against his or her will if the instruction is not in accordance with that person’s faith. This guarantee also extends to religious ceremonies and observances. No religious community or denomination shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for pupils of that community or denomination in any place of education maintained wholly by that community or denomination (Article 38.3). The recognised fundamental rights shall not entitle any person “to form, take part in the activity or be a member of a secret society.” (Article 38.4).
In an effort to promote social inclusion, Article 15 (3, c and d) of the constitution places the state under a duty to encourage inter-religious marriages and to promote the establishment of associations and groups for members of different religions. Some states adopted legislation requiring preachers to obtain a licence to preach (i.e., in Kano, Borno, Niger, Katsina and Kaduna States). Nigerians have particularly high levels of religious commitment, with 93 percent of its population indicating that religion is very important to their lives.
Nigeria has a mixed legal system comprising of English law, common law, customary law, and, in several states, Islamic law (Shari’a). Pursuant to Article 275.1 of the Nigerian Constitution, states are entitled to empanel a Shari’a Court of Appeal. A Shari’a Court of Appeal of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja is foreseen in Article 260.1 of the Constitution. When 12 northern states officially introduced Islamic law more than 20 years ago, many Muslims reacted enthusiastically while Christians opposed the decision. There were riots that claimed several thousand lives – Christians as well as Muslims. “Most Muslims in northern Nigeria,” writes Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, “have continued to re-echo sentiments of the old caliphate (1804-1903), which views Christianity as a foreign religion that is tied to colonialism.”
After more than 20 years of Shari’a implantation, the situation in northern Nigeria has become worse as ethnicity and religion have effectively become a means to obtain power, resources and privileges. In most of the northern states blasphemy laws are contained in both the Shari’a and state penal codes; Christian education is not taught in public schools; Christian students have no access to state scholarships and graduates are discriminated against in the labour market; building permits for churches are denied, and Christian places of worship are illegally destroyed with no compensation. To the contrary, in south-west Nigeria, where a significant percentage of Muslims live, no significant incident of religiously motivated violence has occurred, and interreligious relations are generally respectful.
The imposition of Shari’a sentences (culminating in death) inflicts cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment (i.e., amputations and beatings) which conflicts with the international obligations of the country. In addition, the “hisbah” (aka religious police) impose moral and social restrictions, for example: seizing and destroying bottles of beer; locking down shisha joints; raiding hotels; banning stylish haircuts; banning eating in public during Ramadan (even in areas controlled by non-Muslims); breaking up “immoral gatherings”, and arresting people that do not follow the Shari’a. Some hisbah are state run entities (i.e., in Kano, Zamfara, and Sokoto states), disregarding the explicit prohibition of Article 214.1 of the constitution which states that “no other police force [except the Nigerian Police Force] shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof”.
A longstanding question by the Christian community is why, despite being a non-confessional state with a nearly 50 percent Christian population, is Nigeria since 1986 a full member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose goals are, among others: preserving “Islamic symbols and common heritage”; to “defend the universality of Islamic religion”, and “revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world”. A further controversial decision by the federal government under the presidency of Buhari was the strengthening relations with Iran.
Discrimination made legal by Shari’a
In the predominantly Muslim north, non-Muslims face “legalized” discrimination because of interpretations of the Shari’a law, where they are applied the blasphemy law; are excluded from government positions; suffer the abduction and forced marriage of Christian women by Muslim men; there is are no authorisations granted for church or chapel constructions; and they are imposed dress codes such as the imposition of the Muslim hijab on all female students in all secondary schools.
The increasing enforcement of blasphemy provisions enshrined in Nigeria’s criminal and Shari’a codes has been considered by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) “a significant risk to religious freedom for Nigerians, especially religious minorities and those who espouse unpopular or dissenting beliefs”. An Islamic cleric, Sheikh Abduljabar Nasir Kabara, was sentenced to death for blasphemy by a Shari’a court in Kano, a decision that is expected to be appealed. The Sufi musician Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, sentenced to death in 2020 for posting allegedly blasphemous song lyrics in WhatsApp, and after his appeal was rejected in August 2022, is challenging the constitutionality of this legislation before the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Beyond criminal legislation, social revenge and brutality for presumed “blasphemous” expressions are no less worrying. On 12 May 2022, a 22-year-old Christian girl, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto State, was mobbed and brutally murdered due to blasphemy allegations by fellow Muslim students who burnt her body afterwards.
In June 2021, the Catholic Bishops in Nigeria called for a review of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution stating it favoured Muslims, putting “Christians and adherents of other religions at a disadvantage,” thus not auguring “well for the unity and progress of the country.” The drafters of the 1999 Constitution created Shari’a courts for Muslims. The diverse legal systems and regimes, however, results in the current situation of not having one law common for all Nigerian citizens.
Many legal practitioners and academics consider that Shari’a law and courts contradict the non-confessional nature of the Nigerian Constitution. Despite this, a Kano federal court decided on 17 August 2022, for the first time, that “Sharia law is constitutional … [and] the attempt by the appellants to prove the illegality of sharia law is therefore unfounded.” In addition, two months prior, on 17 June, the Nigerian Supreme Court upheld the right of female students to wear the hijab in Lagos public schools overruling the state restriction.
Shari’a courts already exist in 12 of Nigeria’s northern states and there is increasing pressure to set up more. For example, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) expressed support for the introduction of Shari’a in the south-west; the Muslim community in the southern state of Osum demanded the state governor recognise Shari’a courts as part of the state judiciary (in fact, the president of the community disclosed that they had already established a Shari’a court). Further, the National Council of Muslim Youth Organisations called for the establishment of a Shari’a court of appeal in Lagos State, and requested the mandatory establishment of Shari’a courts for any Nigerian state that has at least 100 Muslims living within it, through amending Section 275 (1) of the constitution. Casting a wider net, the Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria (MULAN) demanded the creation of Shari’a courts throughout the southern, majority Christian, part of the country to cater to the interests of the region’s Muslim population.
Violence and terrorist attacks
Nigeria is listed number 6 (out of 163 countries) in the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). In addition to hostilities by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the nation is riven by banditry and gang-mafia violence, intra-Islamist factional fighting between Shi’ites, Izala, Boko Haram, and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) among other groups, as well as religiously driven terrorist attacks against (mostly) Christians, Muslims, and members of traditional religions. In 2016, Boko Haram, a Salafi-jihadist group fighting for the imposition of a caliphate across Nigeria and a strict version of Shari’a law, split into two factions: Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’adati wal-Jihad (JAS), and ISWAP. A third faction (Ansaru al-Musulmina fi Bilad al-Sudan, or Ansaru), has increased its activity, operating mainly around Nigeria’s north-western and central region. A large part of the attacks by Boko Haram and ISWAP occur in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in the north-east, and to lesser extent in others such as Gombe, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Bauchi and Taraba states. ISWAP’s interpretation of Shari’a leads to cruel punishment such as amputating the hands of alleged thieves, killing adulterers or civilians that refuse to pay taxes or disobey orders. The group targets in particular the Christian minority in north-eastern Nigeria, probably partly to demonstrate its loyalty to ISIS. A report released by the UNDP Nigeria in June 2021, estimated that through the end of 2020, the conflict in the north-east had resulted in nearly 350,000 deaths, with 314,000 of those from indirect causes. Religious differences are seen by 52 percent of the Nigerian north-eastern and 49 percent of the north-western populations as grounds for conflict.
In some areas, such in the Kaduna state, terrorists have infiltrated and dominated communities and formed “a parallel governing authority”, exercising control over social and economic activities and the dispensation of justice. The Federal government’s efforts to eradicate them and their activities have been viewed by some as an “exercise in futility”. In addition, a biased and unfair distribution of resources by the Federal government discriminating Christians has been denounced by the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Ignatius Ayau Kaigama, as a “subtle persecution”.
While Muslims are also victims of violence in the country, Christians are disproportionally targeted. The Report on Nigeria Violence (2019-2022) published by the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa showed the overall ratio of Christians/Muslims killed to be 7.6/1. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), attacks on the Christian community rose amid a wider increase in violence targeting civilians around the country: total civilian targeting increased by 28 percent from 2020 to 2021, and this trend continued into 2022. The overall figures are horrific. A report published in August 2021 by the Nigerian NGO Intersociety disclosed 43,000 Christians killed by Nigerian jihadists in 12 years, 18,500 permanently disappeared, 17,500 churches attacked, 2,000 Christian schools destroyed, 10 million uprooted in the North, six million forced to flee, and four million IDPs. As of June 2022, average monthly violent events targeting Christians rose by 50 percent compared to 2020 in the north-west and north-central regions. The “Nigerian Atrocities Documentation Project” by the Kukah Centre of Abuja recorded nearly 200 attacks on Christians communities in northern Nigeria during an eight-month period in 2022, in which hundreds of Christians were killed and thousands displaced, with little police or military intervention.
Religious leaders have often been particularly targeted. Since 2012, 39 Catholic priests have been killed and 30 abducted in addition to 17 catechists murdered. In May 2022, the Islamic State released a video showing the execution of 20 Nigerian Christians “to avenge the killing of the group’s leaders in the Middle East” earlier in 2022. In the same month, ISWAP terrorists attacked Rann (Borno state), killing at least 45 farmers during a harvest on their farm.
One of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in recent years, however, was committed on 5 June 2022 by unidentified gunmen that opened fire on the St Francis Catholic church in Owo town, southwest Nigeria, on Pentecost Sunday leaving more than 50 dead including women and children.
On 31 July 2022, Fulani terrorists killed eight Christians in Plateau state. In September 2022, extremist Fulani herdsmen abducted over 45 persons in at Kasuwan Magani in Kajuru LGA of Southern Kaduna, storming the Cherubim and Seraphim Church during a night vigil demanding a N200m ransom. On 19 October 2022, suspected armed Fulani herdsmen killed 36 villagers after a siege of Gbeji town in Benue State. On 23 November 2022, militant Fulani herdsmen invaded an Enugu community killing 10, injuring many, and razing their houses. In another barbaric attack in December 2022, at least 46 villagers were killed in northern Kaduna state in two separate attacks believed to have been perpetrated by a group of militant Fulani herdsmen. No less than 100 houses were razed, with some victims burnt alive. Local Church leaders state that although attacks against Christian villages and churches as well as priests, nuns, pastors, seminarians and faithful are reported nearly every day in Nigerian national media, many of these atrocities go unreported globally and have no international repercussions. Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi, Benue State, speaks of a “creeping genocide” against Christians, with the goal “to Islamise all majority Christian regions”.
Ongoing conflicts have been and remain common in Nigeria’s Middle Belt between the mainly Muslim nomadic Fulani herders and other ethnic, mainly Christian, agriculturalists. The roots of the violence are complicated though principally a struggle for resources (land and water) with ethnic, political, and religious elements.
From this toxic brew emerge Fulani terrorists – a tiny minority among the 12 to 16 million Fulani ethnic group in Nigeria – who have declared their commitment to an Islamist ideology recruited by national and transnational jihadist criminal groups. According to Aid to the Church in Need research, many of the Fulani terrorists seem to originate from neighbouring countries. Under the pretext of competition for resources, Fulani Islamist extremists kill, burn and mutilate Nigerians along ethnic and religious lines targeting churches, religious leaders, and celebrations, as well as Muslims who do not accept the fundamentalist agenda. An estimated 13,000 - 19,000 killings by Fulani terrorists have occurred since 2009, with countless other victims suffering life-changing injuries.
The Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) notes: “The majority of attacks with the highest number of killings take place in the Nigerian farming season. Abductions are more equally spread over the year. Attacks during the farming season have a greater impact on the lives of the victims than attacks at any other time. This finding strengthens the suspicion that the attackers aim to kill or starve their victims, especially the Christians in northern Nigeria. Some call this ‘genocide by attrition’.”
Disregarding factual reported evidence, some predominant narratives still play down the Islamist nature of the Fulani terrorist attacks. A statement issued after the 5 June 2022 massacre at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo by Irish President Michael D. Higgins, in which Higgins condemned the attack, linked the atrocity to “the consequences of climate change” by the pastoral peoples. Bishop Jude Ayodeji Arogundade of Ondo responded days later to the president’s statement saying that “his reasons for this gruesome massacre are incorrect and far-fetched.”
By neglecting the religious dimension, these narratives blur the distinction between victims and perpetrators, transmute the criminal nature of the attacks, and neutralize any possible solution by misdiagnosing it. As Baroness Cox, Co-Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, argued: “While the underlying causes of violence are complex, the asymmetry and escalation of attacks by well-armed Fulani militia upon these predominately Christian communities are stark and must be acknowledged. Such atrocities cannot be attributed just to desertification, climate change or competition for resources, as [the UK] Government have claimed.”
In response to the growing violence, several state governments in Nigeria – initially enacted in 2016 in the four Middle Belt states of Ekiti, Edo, Benue, and Taraba – adopted anti-open grazing laws to limit potential herdsmen conflicts with farmers. However, the inaction of the Federal Government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani Muslim himself – as many of the governmental leaders – is increasingly perceived by a large part of the Nigerian population as a tacit support to the Fulani goals. The Nigerian Army has been also accused of collaborating with Fulani terrorists in kidnapping for ransom. The government that released Boko Haram terrorists in 2022, revealed plans to free hundreds of “repentant” terrorists, creating social alarm and unrest. According to a Reuters investigation, since at least 2013, the Nigerian military “has conducted a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme in the country’s northeast, ending at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls (…) many [of whom] had been kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.”
On 11 December 2020, the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by Boko Haram and the Nigerian Security Forces. To date, however, no investigation has been opened concerning the widespread and systematic criminal actions perpetrated by Fulani jihadist groups against Christian communities in the country, despite several reliable media and civil society reports documenting the systematic killings, rapes, kidnappings, attacks against religious site and leaders, as well as the destruction of livelihoods and occupation of lands, against those communities. Because of the widespread violence, many Nigerians, among them Christians, have had to flee over the years, either as IDPs or as refugees. According to UNHCR reports there are 2,197,824 IDPs in the north-east of Nigeria (mostly in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states), and 969,757 in the North-West and North-Central regions. In addition, 339,669 Nigerians have sought asylum in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on 17 November 2021 the removal of Nigeria from the list of the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) on religious freedom, after it had been added to the list by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020. The decision was considered by USCIRF as “inexplicable”, accusing the US State Department of not having any justification for the removal of Nigeria “as an egregious violator of religious freedom, that clearly meet the legal standards for designation as CPCs.” Sam Brownback, the former U.S. religious freedom ambassador, called the deletion of Nigeria from the CPC list “a serious blow to religious freedom in both Nigeria and across the region.” The decision to delist Nigeria from the CPC countries, weakening the credibility of the US Administration in the eyes of Nigeria’s Christian leaders, was published just one day before Blinken’s visit to Nigeria.
Upcoming elections
On 25 February 2023, Nigerians elected a new president and vice-president, as well as members of the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate. A presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu of the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) party, chose a Muslim senator as vice-president thus presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Nigerian Christian communities expressed fear that the rupture of the consolidated practice in presidential elections of having a Muslim-Christian ticket would expand social tensions and fuel Islamist terrorist attacks against Christians, many of whom will be forced to flee the country.
After nearly eight years in power, Nigeria's outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari will step down leaving a situation of chaos and general unrest, due to deadly insecurity, increasing costs of living and food scarcity. The future president will face a disastrous security situation on several fronts: Boko Haram and ISWAP jihadism, Islamist Fulani terrorism, banditry, a separatist insurgency and “oil militants.” Overcoming the religious, ethnic and regional divisions in the country will also be a major challenge for the new Nigerian president. In addition, Nigeria is probably suffering the worst financial and economic conditions since the return to democracy in 1999 with falling revenue and unsustainable debt. An Africa Polling Institute report reveals that between 2019 and 2021, there was a 41 percent (from 32 percent to 73 percent) increase in the proportion of citizens who would seize the opportunity to emigrate with their families out of Nigeria.
Prospects for Religious Freedom
Religious freedom in Nigeria is under grave threat, principally as a consequence of legal measures that support the discrimination against Christians in the northern states as well as severe and relentless atrocities committed throughout the country. The victims are predominantly Christian, but also Muslim and those of traditional religions, religious leaders and faithful who suffer at the hands of the terrorists – national and transnational jihadist and criminal armed groups.
The prevalent narrative – oft limited to “climate change and intercommunal tensions” – negates the reality and true drivers of violence on the ground, particularly the specific targeting of Christians, rendering victims of this religious group destitute and politically invisible. This is not helped by the federal government which has consistently refused to employ the term “terrorist” to recognise the horrific nature of the act as well as the perpetrators, despite repeated calls by national and international civil society organisations, academics, political representatives, and religious leaders. The prospects for religious freedom in Nigeria remain grim.
Nigeria