THERE is no let-up in the impunity of some state actors. This is evident in Kano, where the state Hisbah Board recently confiscated and destroyed over 3.8 million bottles of assorted alcoholic drinks worth about N1 billion. Such serial misdeeds drum the urgent need for the Federal Government to step in and stop the serial violation of human and occupational rights of other Nigerians.
The Hisbah’s provocation has been a long-running assault on rights and the 1999 Constitution. It has been enabled by the Kano and 11 other Northern state governments, who through exclusive religious-inspired laws trample brazenly on Nigeria’s secularity. Worse is that the Federal Government has been cowardly, complicit, and partisan by failing to stop the assault and protect the property rights and livelihood of the thousands of citizens oppressed by such behaviour. It is time to end this travesty.
Having escaped sanctions for its actions in the past, the Kano Hisbah gloated that in the past few months, it had destroyed 3.8 million bottles of assorted alcoholic beverages across the state. The head of the agency, Haroun ibn Sina, spoke just after he presided over the destruction of beer bottles at the Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area. Arrogantly, he declared: “The sale, consumption, and possession of alcoholic substances are prohibited in the state.” This is ridiculous. Kano is part of Nigeria where the production, sale, consumption, and trade in alcoholic beverages are perfectly legal; they are major economic activities and employers of labour.
But the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, like some of his other colleagues in the North-West and North-East, disdain Nigeria’s secularity and pass laws explicitly driven by religion. They treat the country’s multi-sectarianism with contempt.
The seizure and confiscation of alcoholic contents is not new across the North but is given vigorous expression in Kano. This is not ideal in a diverse polity.
In November 2020, the Sharia police in Kano destroyed 1.97 million bottles of different beer brands worth over N200 million. The confiscation cost a beer distributor in Kano, John Simon, over N35 million. The distraught businessman had recounted his loss amid tears, and said the money was a bank loan.
In Jigawa, its Hisbah board said it confiscated 1,906 bottles of assorted alcoholic drinks and arrested 92 suspects. Their actions range from the bizarre to the ridiculous. Last December, the Kano Hisbah announced its decision to question the parents of the 44th Miss Nigeria, Shatu Garko, over their daughter’s ‘illegal’ participation in the beauty pageant, but later backtracked in the face of a public outcry. In June, Kano ‘banned’ the use of mannequins by tailors, supermarket stores and boutique owners to display clothes in Kano, describing the act as “idolatry.”
In April 2021, the ‘morality police’ arrested 11 persons in Kano metropolis for not fasting during the Ramadan. In November 2020, the same unit wrote to a radio station in Kano, 96.9 Cool FM, and “barred” it from using the term ‘Black Friday.’ This is a colloquial term used by supermarket chains for sales promotions around the world. The National Broadcasting Commission, which has been so vigorous in harassing broadcast organisations for broadcasts deemed uncomfortable to the central government, kept mum over the ludicrous order.
The contravention of citizens’ rights on religious grounds must be addressed. These activities and the laws that enable them are in violation of the 1999 Constitution. While the basic law permits customary and Sharia family and customary civil law, Section 10 unambiguously declares that the “Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.” Declarations by some governors to compel compliance to religious dictates circumvent this. Banning perfectly legal activities in a secular republic such as production and sale of alcohol, dressing styles, peaceful assembly, and social mixing of the sexes, are flagrant rights violations.
They also infringe on the fundamental rights set out in Section 38 of the constitution: “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, and 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 danger in adopting religious ordinances is that fanatical non-state actors eventually come to believe that the state has not gone far enough; they then resort to acting violently to force their own version of religious laws on everyone, including the state government. Such thinking drives the violent jihadism of groups ranging from al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to Boko Haram and ISWAP. Everyone suffers, including the state actors seeking to enforce religious doctrines.
Nigeria, being multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural, it is better to leave religion to individuals and organised religious faiths, while the state moderates by guaranteeing freedom of worship to all. Those states that have set up religious laws may have been propelled by good intentions, but they should realise that in the combustible multi-sectarian and multi-ethnic Nigeria of today, building bridges is more important than exploiting religious sentiments for political gain. It is productive activities that put food on the table and create employment for the teeming youths, 55 percent of whom are jobless, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Moreover, all states share from the Companies Income Tax, import and export duty taxes, excise duties and value added tax from the alcoholic beverages that some are busy destroying. The Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service recognised the Nigerian Breweries Plc as the biggest taxpayer in Kaduna, having remitted a total of N1.4 billion to the state government between 2018 and 2020.
It is ironical that the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), that resolutely opposes state police is curiously silent on the existence and divisive activities of the religious police despite its obvious unconstitutionality. Victims should file civil suits and seek compensation.
Ganduje and other Northern governors should focus on weightier matters and set up regional community policing to end the horrific security challenges plaguing their states. He once confessed that there were over three million out-of-school children in Kano State. Literacy level there is a mere 48.9 per cent compared to the national average of over 70 per cent. There are about 2.0 million drug addicts in the state, says the Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Mohammed Marwa, while the state has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the country. Other North-West and North-East states fare even worse. These are real and pressing developmental programmes they should grapple with.
The harassment of the innocent and assault on legitimate commercial activities should stop.
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