IMPRUDENT as ever, senators have pushed a bill to establish a ‘National Centre for Christian Education’ through to the second reading stage. According to its sponsors, the law “will regulate and set standards” for the practice of Christianity in Nigeria, and “strengthen religion” for national cohesion. It is another foolhardy step in the federal and state governments’ persistent dabbling in religion in defiance of Nigeria’s secularity. The nonsensical venture should be halted immediately while senators devote attention to the country’s precarious economy, insecurity, infrastructure deficit, and deep divisions.
Justification proffered by senators canvassing its adoption, ranged from shallow to crass ignorance. Binus Yaroe (Adamawa South) said the proposed law would correct the “inappropriate practice of religion,” which he said had “caused problems” in the past. For Istifanus Gyang (Plateau North), the law would help by developing a curriculum for Christian education, curb hate and religious extremism, adding, “religion can be a source of strength and national cohesion.” Abba Moro (Benue South), believes that the centre, when established, would help reverse prevailing the “inappropriate explanation of the Bible and the Koran.”
Everything is wrong with the bill and the reasoning behind it. In a secular, multi-religious polity, any law investing the government with authority to determine appropriate or “inappropriate” practice of any religion is intrusive and beyond the state’s remit. It violates the individual’s and groups’ fundamental rights to freedom of worship. Only despotic theocracies (such as Saudi Arabia, Iran) or republican dictatorships (such as single-party Communist China) engage in such rights violation.
The constitutional role of the government is to guarantee freedom of worship and enforce secular laws.
Government cannot “set standards for the practice of Christianity” or any other faith. It can only make and enforce laws ensuring that no religious practice or activity violates others’ rights or disrupts public peace or break any law.
The 1999 Constitution expressly forbids the adoption of state religion, but successive governments, national and sub-national, perpetually intrude in religion. Section 38 provides for individual “freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief.” It confers inalienable “freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
The parliament is seeking to usurp these rights with the impolitic bill. It should be resisted by every lawful means.
Separation of faith and state is a jurisprudential concept underpinning democratic societies and deemed especially important for social harmony in religiously diverse states. It is anchored on the necessity to build “a wall of separation of church and state,” as coined by the American statesman, Thomas Jefferson; not to suppress religion, but to guarantee freedom of faith free of state intrusion, and to guarantee individual and groups’ rights to faith, how to practice it, and the right to choose.
In religion, however, Nigeria’s federal and state governments are often lawless, and reckless. Like theocracies, they divert billions of public funds to religious activities. In 2021, Zamfara State had internally generated revenue of only N3.5 billion, but spent over N2.9 billion on religious affairs.
Twelve northern states, in blatant violation of Section 10 of the constitution that “the government of the federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion,” have adopted penal aspects of the Islamic Sharia law and have been trampling with impunity on rights, harassing people over dress, association and seizing and destroying alcoholic beverages.
Nigerian governments’ heedless preoccupation with religion is discriminatory; in practice virtually adopting Islam and Christianity, the two dominant faiths, they marginalise the many other traditional and imported faiths.
It is not the first time the NASS would make such a misguided move. In 2016, a bill to establish an Ecclesiastical Court of Appeal “to complement the regular courts in adjudicating in matters relating to the tenet of the Christian faith” similarly passed second reading at the House of Representatives. The lawmakers demonstrate their lurch towards confusion. The world’s 2.6 billion Christians are separated into a whopping 45,000 denominations, reports the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. In Nigeria where there are also hundreds of Christian denominations, some with widely differing doctrines and practices; which doctrines would the government centre prescribe?
Likely, the sponsors of these bills are responding to the aggressive implementation of penal Sharia in parts of the country. This is misguided, as once started, there may be no ending it as promoters on both sides will press for more, while other faiths will demand equity.
There are very weighty existential challenges confronting the country. Insecurity, and economic adversity; the country is broke and on the edge of a major debt crisis, joblessness is rising, the national currency is in tailspin, and poverty is widespread. Responsible lawmakers everywhere else roll up their sleeves, apply critical thinking and work to solve national problems.
Lawmakers should be rolling back state involvement in religion, not plunging deeper. Mixture of politics/governance with religion has been poisonous, provoking disharmony, strife, bloodletting, extremism and terrorism and impoverishing millions. The northern states that dabble most in religion are also the most wretched, accounting for 65 percent of the 133 million multidimensionally poor Nigerians; 61.75 percent of its population is illiterate; child marriage averages 62.5 percent in the North-East and North-West; and 69 percent of Nigeria’s out-of-school children are up North.
Obsessive state involvement in religion has not aided development or peace: once peaceful Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in the North-East have birthed the world’s third most lethal Islamic terrorist group in Boko Haram and its offshoots; banditry has laid low Zamfara, Kaduna and other North-West states, and spread to the North-Central. Drug abuse, once mostly a problem of the southern states, has taken hold in states promoting religion.
In Kano, where religious enforcers relish violating individual rights, the NDLEA once reported that an alarming 37 percent of the population abuse drugs. Nigerians should insist that the federal, states and local governments should promote secularity, stop the dalliance with religion and concentrate on delivering development.
