News
Gani Adams fumes as Sultan backs Sharia courts in S’West
The Sultan of Sokoto-led Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs has thrown its weight behind the push to establish Sharia courts in South-West states.
In a statement on Wednesday titled, “Live and Let Live!” signed by its Deputy National Legal Adviser, Haroun Muhammed, the NSCIA decried what it described as the “high spate of intolerance and disregard for the rights of Muslims, especially in the Southern part of the country.”
The council argued that contrary to the assertion of South-West governors, Sharia courts are backed by the Nigerian Constitution.
The intervention by the NSCIA comes on the back of festering controversies over the creation of Sharia courts or panels in South-West State.
On Tuesday, the Governor of Ogun State, Dapo Abiodun, issued a stern statement rejecting the formation of a Sharia Court in his state.
Abiodun said Sharia courts are not recognised in Ogun State’s legal framework and Nigeria’s constitution and warned the brains behind the Sharia court to halt the formation.
Abiodun’s statement came about a week after his counterpart in Ekiti State, Biodun Oyebanji, kicked against the establishment of a Sharia panel in Ekiti.
Earlier in December last year, an announcement by the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria to inaugurate a Sharia court in the Oyo town of Oyo State generated controversy, leading to its indefinite suspension.
Addressing the issue, the Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, said, “About the establishment of Sharia court in Oyo town, people may try, but for us, I swore to uphold our laws and the Constitution of Nigeria.”
However, the Sultan-led NSCIA, on Wednesday, called on governors and traditional rulers in the South-West to protect and preserve the constitutional rights of Muslims in their respective domains.
The NSCIA described as “unnecessary and unwarranted” the resistance to the establishment of Shariah panel in the South-West, noting that the Sharia Arbitration Panel was a voluntary platform designed solely for the resolution of civil and marital disputes among consenting Muslims.
Muhammed said, “The NSCIA strongly supports the establishment of Independent Shariah Arbitration Panel in Ekiti and Oyo States for the purpose so intended, especially where the Muslims in the states have been denied their constitutional right to a Shariah Court of Appeal in all the states of southwestern Nigeria.
“The council cannot find any legal justification for the unnecessary alarm and unwarranted resistance. All the states in the North have Shariah Courts and some, in addition, have Customary Courts.
“The most recent of this is the development emanating from Ekiti state where the effort of the Muslim community to set up an Independent Shariah (Arbitration) Panel was met with unwarranted resistance and objections from both political and traditional quarters.
“This is coming barely a few weeks after the announcement of the inauguration of a Shariah panel in Oyo State generated unnecessary anxiety thereby leading to its indefinite postponement.
“This and other cases, such as the denial of the rights of female students to wear the Hijab despite a Supreme Court judgment, are nothing but calculated attempts to prevent Muslims in the region from practising their faith.”
The council maintained that the setting up of the panel was legitimate, mentioning that the Arbitration and the Shariah Court of Appeal, just like the Customary Court of Appeal (which all of them have) are provided for in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (see section 275), “confirming the legality of both initiatives. “
“The Independent Arbitration Panel, which is a voluntary platform designed solely for the resolution of civil and marital disputes among consenting Muslims was to fill the inexplicable vacuum created by the failure of the political elite in South-Western Nigeria to establish Shariah Courts, as allowed by the Nigerian Constitution, in South-Western States, despite the huge population of Muslims in the region,” the statement further read.
The NSCIA advised against acts of intolerance for Muslims in the South-West, such as the opposition to the inauguration of a Sharia panel in Oyo and Ekiti States, and the denial of the rights of female students to wear the Hijab despite a Supreme Court judgment.
“The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs under the
leadership of its President-General and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, is particularly disturbed about the high spate of intolerance and disregard for the rights of Muslims, especially in the southern part of the country.
“The council calls on the governors and traditional authorities in the southern part of the country, particularly the South-West, to ensure that the constitutional rights of Muslims in their respective domains are preserved and protected. While others are allowed to live, Muslims should also be let live,” the statement read.
‘Sharia Court not new in Ogun’
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Sharia Arbitration Committee in Ogun State, Mallam Yusuf Oloyede, has clarified that the panel was inaugurated in 2018 and had been sitting at the Egba Central Mosque, Kobiti, Abeokuta, to handle disputes among Muslims.
Oloyede made this disclosure in an interview with The PUNCH on Wednesday, following public reactions to a flier circulating on social media announcing the inauguration of the committee.
According to him, the flier created a false impression that the panel was newly established, whereas it had been operating for over six years.
Oloyede emphasised that the committee does not function as a court but serves as an arbitration panel for Muslims who voluntarily seek resolution of their disputes in line with Qur’anic and Hadith principles.
“What we have is not a court per se but an arbitration committee that has been in existence since 2018. It is for arbitration of issues for Muslims who want such issues heard and resolved according to the Quran and Hadith,” he stated.
He further explained that the panel comprises jurists drawn from different regions of the state, including Yewa, Ijebu, Egba, and Remo, and holds its sittings at Egba Central Mosque.
On whether the committee would discontinue its sessions or review its operations following the Ogun State Government’s recent warning, Oloyede said the matter would be deliberated upon internally.
“We wouldn’t know how the state government’s statement is applicable to us because we are not running a court but an arbitration committee,” he said.
He added that the panel would meet soon to discuss the latest developments and determine the next course of action.
Finally, white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel on the evening of Thursday, May 8, signalling that the Vatican has elected a new Pope. The cardinal selected to succeed Pope Francis will be announced in due course.
On Wednesday, 133 cardinals entered the chapel for a deeply choreographed ritual that has preceded the election of every Pope since 1179. The first session started with a vow of secrecy—excommunication awaits anyone who leaks details of the votes—followed by the vote.
Once the numbers were tallied, the votes were burned in a special stove set up inside the chapel. Yesterday’s black smoke informed the public that the cardinals had yet to make their decision.
The papal conclave is a centuries-old process with modern-day consequences.
Francis’ 12-year pontificate was pivotal, not just for the church, but for the globe. His advocacy for care of migrants and the poor, his tolerance for homosexuality, and his denunciation of climate change and conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine helped reset the world’s moral compass.
Yet within the church, his reformist interpretation of church doctrine—”Who am I to judge?” he famously responded when asked to weigh in on gay priests—set off a polarizing struggle between modernists and traditionalists. So too has his big tent inclusivity that welcomed practitioners of all kinds, and invited many of them, even members of the LGBTQ community and lay women, to sit with bishops and contribute their thoughts on the direction of the church in meetings called synods. It is this vision of synodality—the church as a listening one instead of a top-down enforcer of doctrine—that is at the core of Francis’ progressivism, and the biggest threat to traditionalists who want to maintain the power and influence of bishops and cardinals.
Every conclave, at its most fundamental, is a referendum on the previous pope’s legacy. Behind closed doors and sworn to secrecy, the cardinals will have had to decide if the new pope is one to continue on Francis’ radically inclusive path, or someone who will roll back his policies in favor of a more inward-looking church focused on doctrine.
That will have repercussions in a tense historical moment of religious and ethnic strife exacerbated by conflict, climate change, rising nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment are coming to the fore, says Alberto Melloni, a Vatican historian who is the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna, Italy. There are relatively few global figures who can move opinion, drive conversation, and call for change like a pope. “It will be very different if we have a pope who is more worried about ideological topics of tradition than someone who makes the unity of the human family and care for the planet the first point in his agenda,” says Melloni.
There are 252 cardinals, but only those under the age of 80 took part in the conclave. Of the 133 cardinals that voted, Francis appointed 108.
Over the past several years, Francis sought to elevate bishops from underrepresented places such as Myanmar, Rwanda, and East Timor to the college of cardinals to better represent the scope of global Catholicism. Coming from wildly varying cultural backgrounds, they do not align on any consistent ideological spectrum. Many of them are more conservative on issues of homosexuality and women, even if they embrace Francis’ focus on other kinds of inclusivity. That made for a very unpredictable vote, says Melloni. “It is not liberals vs. conservatives. It is not donkeys and elephants facing one another across the aisle. It is a collage of people divided into very small groups,” aligned by theological leanings, doctrinal philosophy, or missionary experience.
Given the stakes, the competing agendas, and the constantly shifting micro alliances and priorities, it was impossible to predict from the outset who will ultimately get support from two-thirds of a very divided electorate, faced with one of the most, if not the most, important decisions of their career. “The only thing we can say with any confidence is that we’ll have a male pope,” says Melloni, when pressed to hazard a guess for the outcome ahead of the papal election.
Most of the politicking has already been done, conducted in private over informal meetings and at dinners in the nearby guesthouse where the cardinals stay. Overt campaigning is frowned upon, but it is not uncommon for trusted “kingmaker” cardinals to push for the candidates that share their values and vision for the church.
Once a papal election starts, the cardinals cannot leave the conclave except in rare cases, and they are cut off from the rest of the word, with no access to phones, the internet or even newspapers (the word conclave comes from the Latin “with key,” as in, locked up.)
Inside the chapel, the electors share a brief prayer and take an oath to observe the sanctity of the process before handwriting the name of their chosen candidate on a piece of folded paper. One by one, the cardinals will deposit their votes in a special urn. Once voting is done, the votes are tallied, then burned.
At the same time, the lawmakers also called on the President to take immediate steps by deploying security forces to the most affected areas, particularly Bokkos and Bassa—and to extend protection to other communities at risk.
Lawmakers also pressed for urgent humanitarian action, as relief items were requested for those caught in the crisis, and the ministry responsible for humanitarian matters was told to design a long-term recovery plan for the devastated villages.
This decision came after a motion was raised by Rep. Daniel Asama, who stressed the need to act swiftly. He pointed out that people living in and around Jos, especially in Bokkos and Bassa have endured wave after wave of attacks.
He painted a grim picture: “Families torn apart, homes burned down, farms abandoned, and entire communities uprooted. He insisted the violence must end and the displaced must be supported before the situation worsens.
-
Entertainment13 hours agoI’m broke yet accused of money laundering – VDM breaks silence after EFCC release
-
News23 hours agoJust in: Finally, EFCC bows to pressure, releases VDM
-
News5 hours agoBreaking: Three Serving PDP HoR Members Defect to APC
-
News13 hours agoEdo police rescue kidnapped PDP chairman, 36 others
-
News13 hours agoTomato Ebola Causes Loss of N1.3 Billion, Contributing to Rising Food Prices
-
News14 hours agoSad! Five members of one family die of food poisoning
-
News6 hours agoFinally, IMF deletes Nigeria from its debtors list
-
News4 hours agoEx-Governor Uduaghan, Daughter Dump PDP, Join APC