Preach and be damned?

As far as controversial issues go, the not-so-recent move by the equally controversial Malam Nasir el-Rufa’i, Governor of Kaduna State, to regulate preaching in his state probably ranks on top in the country in recent weeks. A man never afraid to take big decisions, the self-proclaimed “accidental public servant” sent a bill in October last year to amend a somewhat dormant 1984 law which regulated preaching in the state.

Air-Commodore Usman Mu’azu, military governor of the state under the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari in his first coming as military head of state, enacted the law, titled Regulation of Religious Preaching Edict, 1984, in August that year following violent religious clashes in the state. It was subsequently amended twice, first in 1987 by Lt-Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, and then in 1996 by Lt-Col Hammed Ibrahim Ali, as military governors of the state.

The 1984 law authorized the Jama’atu Nasrul Islam (JNI) for Muslims and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for Christians as the only two bodies that can approve preachers in the state.

Among other things, it banned preaching without license, the playing of religious cassettes in public places, uses of loudspeakers outside mosques or churches and their surrounding areas, abuses of religious books, carrying of weapons in places of worship or  preaching, and the use of the terms “infidel”, “non-Islamic” or “pagans.”

It was this 1984 edict, as amended, that Malam Nasir sought to further amend by sending a bill to the state’s House of Assembly in October last year. It’s not very clear why, but until last month few people outside the House heard anything about his bill. Then all hell broke lose when first the state’s chapter of CAN, and subsequently the state’s chapter of Council of Imams and Ulama’as, raised serious objections to the bill.

Perhaps the worst exemplification of the opposition to the bill was the headline and content of a story published by the Lagos based Sunday Telegraph in its edition of March 6. “Religious war looms in Kaduna” it thundered and added the obviously inciting and unprofessional rider that el-Rufa’i “moves to stifle evangelism through the new bill.”

The story described el-Rufa’i’s approach to the amendment as “subterranean.” It also said his amendment bill came into the open only because some Christian members of the House leaked it. Clearly if you depended on the newspaper’s story alone you would be forgiven for thinking the governor, being a Muslim, was on a war path with Christianity!

Not to be outdone was one fire-and-brimstone preacher from far away Auchi, Edo State, Apostle Johnson Sulaiman, who, during a Sunday sermon, told the congregation of his little known but aptly named Omega Fire Ministries that el-Rufa’i should “revoke the law or die”, reportedly to the applause of the congregation.

A more restrained chairman of Benue State CAN, Reverend Akpen Leva, said the bill was in conflict with our constitution over its provisions for freedom of religion, free speech and freedom of association. He also said although it did not favour any religion it would have a “more damaging and long term lasting effect on the church.” (Daily Trust, Sunday April 3). His advice to the governor was that he should leave the original law as it was.

Even more restrained was the chairman of the Kaduna State chapter of CAN, Dr. George Dodo. They were not fighting the government in expressing reservations over the bill, he said. Instead they were only concerned about certain “grey areas” that needed to be ironed out and they were studying those areas.

One of those grey areas apparently is the role of the state in licensing preaching. Rev. Father Evaristus Bassey, Director of Caritas International, a department of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) articulated the Church’s fear about this area when he said “Even if the proposed bill contains good aims, the proposed restrictions would play into the hands of officials of state who have hegemonic mentality and would allow them freedom to persecute one religion in favour of another.”  In a state like Kaduna where Muslims constitute the overwhelming majority it was obvious whom Bassey was referring to as hegemonists.

However, it seems even the so-called hegemonists have been hardly exultant about the bill. For one, Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna Central and someone who seem to be permanently at daggers drawn with the governor, has since denounced the bill as contrary to the freedom of speech guaranteed by our constitution. The state, he said, was “fragile” and those in authority owed it to the people to protect their right to worship.

More telling than the senator’s objection is that of the state’s chapter of the Council of Imams and Ulama’a. Its chairman, Sheikh Abubakar Suleiman Babantune, told Daily Trust (Sunday April 3) that it was wrong to ban preaching after 8 pm as el-Rufa’i’s amendment intended to. Again the composition of the interfaith committee to license preachers, he said, was too skewed in favour of government officials and against the clerics. His association, he said, was studying these and other areas it was against.

So far the only unqualified support for the bill has come from the state’s chapter of the JNI. Its chairman, the elderly Malam Ja’afaru Makarfi, told Trust (April 3) “We are solidly behind the regulation of public preaching.” The JNI, he said, “had been regulating public preaching since the era of Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello,” the first and only premier of Northern Nigeria, assassinated in the January 15 1966 coup which ended the First Republic.

The problem with the JNI chairman’s position, however, is obvious; the law as it is has hardly worked. The state may not have witnessed sectarian violence on the scale seen in the eighties and early nineties, but this is no thanks to our clerics on both sides of the religious divide many of whom have been unrestrained in their preaching on air and on the streets. Indeed one can even argue with some justification that the law’s lack of teeth was what probably led eventually to the recent Shi’ite/Army clash in Zaria in which the army seems to have grossly over-reacted.

The state’s governor is therefore right to seek to further amend the law beyond the existing 1984 edict as amended, especially as the edicts were all enacted under military rule. The surprise is that his amendment has raised so much dust considering the fact, as he pointed out in a recent widely publicized media chat, that there are few provisions in his amendment that are not already in the old edict.

Among these few are a ban on night preaching, the enlargement of the interfaith licensing committees at state and local government levels, and the amendment of the penalty for breaching the law from five years in prison with no option of fine to a fine of 250,000 Naira or a maximum of two years in jail, or both.

Opponents of el-Rufa’i’s amendment like Senator Sani say it is in conflict with the provisions of fundamental human rights enshrined in our constitution. The governor himself disagrees. “There is nothing in this law,” he said in the media chat in question, “that is not in conformity with the Constitution.” The governor is more in the right than his opponents.

After all no freedom anywhere is absolute; otherwise anarchy would be the result. The qualifications, however, must be reasonable and practicable.

Both Islam and Christianity say we should do unto others as we want  them to do unto us whether those others belong to our religion and ethnicity or not. It therefore seems reasonable to me that there should be a ban on the use of loudspeakers outside Mosques and Churches beyond the call to prayers from Mosques.

It also seems reasonable to me that there should be a ban on the use of loudspeakers in vehicles plying our streets with religious materials. Certainly I am at one with the revision of the penalty for breaching the law, except that the years of imprisonment should not have been amended from five to two.

However, my journalistic instincts, on one hand, make me wary of licensing preachers especially if government, as seems to be the case here, holds the veto about who gets licensed. On the other hand, no responsible authority can fold it arms and allow a free-for-all preaching.

Obviously Nigeria, as a fragile nation-state, is not like America or the UK that can allow people to publish or preach and be damned only by civil laws such as of libel, defamation, privacy, obscenity, etc. Nigeria’s fragility and religious sensibilities require prior censorship of sorts.

However, such prior censorship should be vested in the religious communities themselves rather than in government.

I believe these and other seeming conflicts between el-Rufa’i’s bill and our Constitution can be resolved by open hearings involving all stakeholders at the House of Assembly before the amendment becomes law.

In the end, however, the problem really, as one will never tire of repeating, has never been so much our laws, as such. The problem has essentially been their application without fear or favour. Hopefully if and when el-Rufa’i succeeds in getting his amendment through he will apply the law without being selective.