The subject of regulating religious preaching in
Kaduna State is not about to go away, certainly not with the
declaration by the governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufa’i, the other day
that he will not back down from it in the face of stiff opposition
to it from certain influential quarters.
Besides, there are the shocking revelations of army
heavy-handedness in the Army/Shi’ite faceoff last December in Zaria
at the ongoing public hearings of the judicial enquiry into the
faceoff. Many people have attributed the faceoff itself ultimately
to the absence of regulation of preaching in the state.
Last week the issue was the subject of this column.
My position was that even though I have reservations about
government issuing licenses to preachers, I believed the governor
was right to seek to regulate preaching for the simple reason that
no freedom anywhere is absolute.
As usual, the article elicited mixed reactions. The
most interesting and thought provoking of them came from my good
friend, and a Kaduna based senior lawyer, Mr. Bitrus Gwada.
Actually his intervention was not in direct response
to my piece. Rather it was to a piece he said he’d received in his
email address from an organization calling itself Southern Kaduna in
Diaspora (SOKAD), USA & Canada. Gwada then circulated both SOKAD’s
piece and his reaction to it among those on his mailing list, myself
included. My assumption was that he sent me the two pieces because
of my column last week.
The SOKAD piece, singed by Messrs. Aminu Likita as
President, Freeman Kamuro as Secretary and Ibrahim A. Maikori as
Financial Secretary, was entitled “The need for free exercise of
religion in Kaduna State.” It was unequivocally opposed to
regulating the preaching of religion in the state. The state’s House
of Assembly, it said from the beginning, should “kill the bill if
the Executive does not withdraw it.”
In his reaction to the SOKAD piece, Gwada disagreed
with its objection to regulating preaching. “The regulation of
preaching in Kaduna (State),” he said, “was absolutely desirable.”
Even then, he said, it was unnecessary to enact any
new law on the subject. Instead, what was needed, he said, was a
political will to enforce the existing 1984 edict as amended, along
with relevant sections of the Penal Code applicable in the North
since before the First Republic.
He pointed out that, contrary to SOKAD’s position
that laws enacted by the military while in power are, by definition,
null and void in a democracy, legally they remained “in force until
properly repealed”, a position supported by another senior lawyer,
Gaius Yaro, whose reaction to my column is published below.
Gwada said the governor’s amendment of the 1984 law
was not only gratuitous it was also unconstitutional because it gave
recognition to Islam and Christianity and the powers it gave
Jama’atu Nasrul Islam (JNI) and Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN) to pick and choose preachers was “not proper.”
The amendment, he also said, was wrong to try
offenders in Shari’a or Customary courts. All offenders, he said,
should be tried in Magistrate courts.
Clearly while the senior lawyer disagreed with SOKAD
on the big picture of regulating preaching in Kaduna State, he
agreed with some of its positions on the details of the governor’s
amendments.
And in taking this position he drew attention to a
70-man committee, the Kaduna State Peace and Reconciliation
Committee (KSPRC), Mr. Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, the late governor of
the state, set up in February 2012 under the joint leadership of
Malam Abbas Dabo Sambo and AVM Ishaya Aboi Shekari (rtd), which
recommended ways to keep the peace in the state. The key
recommendations, Gwada said, were simply the enforcement of existing
laws on religious activities and a ban on stereotypes and hate
speeches. After all, no one, he pointed out, has ever been
prosecuted over any of the violent religious crises the state had
suffered.
From all this it seems Gwada and myself agree on at
least two points; the need to regulate preaching in the state and to
end the widespread impunity by preachers. Beyond these, however, we
seem to disagree on how to go about the regulating.
To begin with, I disagree with him that the
governor’s amendment is gratuitous, if only because the existing
1984 law, with all its amendments, was enacted by soldiers without
public input. Besides, the rise of the Internet alone since the
last amendment of the law in 1996 has made some of its sections
irrelevant.
Secondly, I disagree with the argument by both
himself and SOKAD that singling out Islam and Christianity for
mention in the law amounts to their adoption by the state. The
mention may amount to recognition but recognition is not the same as
adoption.
But even if recognizing the two religions looks like
discriminating against the other religions, there is the good reason
that only the two claim to be universal and therefore actively seek
to propagate themselves across race, ethnicity and nationalism.
Therefore even if it looks discriminatory to single out the two
religions for mention in the law, the argument, for all practical
purposes, is academic. Indeed it can be counter-argued that the
discrimination is AGAINST the two religions precisely because they
seek for converts across all divides.
Thirdly, on the truly difficult issue of who should
chose and pick preachers, the three options seem to be: no one,
government and self-regulation. We may add a fourth which is a
combination of the second and third but with more of the third.
In expressing his outright rejection of el-Rufa’i’s
bill, - as opposed to the more measured opposition from his
Chairman, Dr. George Dodo – the Secretary of Kaduna State CAN, Rev.
Sunday Ibrahim, quoted the Book of Mark 16:15 as saying, “‘Go into
the world and preach to every creature.’ That is a general call on
everyone and as such everyone is a preacher.”
Yet, as the reverend himself said in the same
breathe, those called to be pastors, evangelicals and prophets do
“undergo training with a particular denomination while they are
licensed by and ordained by those churches.” (Daily Trust,
Sunday March 20). This sounds to me like a sensible argument against
a free-for-all.
As I said last week, as a journalist whose calling is
akin to that of a preacher, I have my reservation against government
licensing. This is why journalists have fought against a government
dominated Press Council since Independence in 1960. Government
licensing is clearly a slippery slope to government censorship.
That leaves us with the third option of
self-regulation by the religions themselves. Of course, like other
options, it is not without its own problems, as can be seen from at
least the last reaction to last week’s piece published below.
Even then I consider it the least bad of the
far-from-perfect options we have. To mitigate some of its inherent
problems, there may be need to balance the religious composition of
the committees to issue preaching licenses with well respected
secular community leaders and government officials, but with the
last in minority.
Like all other problems, there can be no perfect
solution to the issue of religious preaching. But if we constantly
talk to ourselves to understand and accept our differences in good
faith and, of course, if we also faithfully enforce the laws we
enact, the kinds and scale of religious violence we have seen in
recent past will be a thing of memory.
RE: Preach and be damned?
I agree with you in the piece with the rhetorical
title: Preach and Be Damned? Why? This is because religion has
become a leviathan and the state a Lilliputian before it. People can
kill and maim in the name of religion. It is a sad, very sad
situation. The governor will be the tallest man if he can clip the
satanic wings of religion. But religion will not budge if the
economy fails to eliminate penury and pain. Rather it will continue
to exalt itself.
Amos Ejimonye,
Kaduna
************
El-Rufa’i doesn’t have to amend the law. He should
implement what is on ground strictly, and get evidence of its
deficiencies, which he will cite, in convincing the House of
Assembly and clerics that there is need for amendments.
I am with him all along but “gani ya kori ji.”
He has three years ahead. Let him test the law as it exists for six
months, enough time to get credible and verifiable evidence of
shortcomings or success. All the Military Edits have been validated
by the 1999 Constitution and deemed to be laws of respective States
where they exist.
Governance is not speed; it is service to the good,
the bad and the ugly.
Gaius A. Yaro,
************
This man el-Rufa’i
is an anti-Christ. Use your column to tell him to stop that evil
bill from the pit of hell or go to Hell if he does not repent.
David,
Lagos.
************
I was initially in support of the Religious preaching
Regulation Bill after listening to Governor El-Rufa'i's convincing
points. However, after listening to the testimony on oath of Dr.
Khaled (Abubakar Aliyu), the Secretary General of Jama'atu Nasrul
Islam, at the commission of enquiry on the Army-Shiites clash, that
Shiites are not Muslims, I saw the need to further rework the
proposed Bill.
With Power of regulation in the hands of
predominantly Wahabi-Salafi JNI, financed largely by the government
of Saudi Arabia, I don't see other Muslim groups treated fairly
under this bill as currently composed.
JNI will do everything possible to deny the adherents
of Tariqa and Shi’ites the right to propagate their doctrine of
Islam.
B.B. Dangora,
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