Kanu and Hisbah Religious police, which is constitutionally treasonous in a secular state

 

Written by Eluwa Chidiebere Chinazu | Biafra Writers 

October 28th, 2022.

The incarceration of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, by the Department of State Security (DSS), and the open consent and support given to an unconstitutional religious police force (Hisbah) by the federal government, should stand as a beacon of lesson to non-Muslim Nigerians, believers of a workable Nigeria, as to the direction the country is heading.

Nnamdi Kanu obviously is fighting for self-determination as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution. Under the Nigerian law, the African Charter on Human and People's right Act 2, 1983, which is now contained in Cap 10 laws of the federal republic of Nigeria, 1990, Nnamdi Kanu is legally and constitutionally right in agitating for self-determination. 

For clarity sake, Article xx(1) of this Charter provides that "All People shall have the right to existence. They shall have unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen." Even the Nigeria Supreme Court validated this Charter in Gani Fawehinmi versus Abacha [2000] 4 SCNJ 401. There's no area of the law (local and international) that interprets self-determination as an act of treason.

Talking about treason, why is the Nigerian mainstream media willfully blind at the treasonous activities of the Hisbah religious police in the country? To begin with, the establishment of the Hisbah religious police is unconstitutional. No law in Nigerian constitution validates the establishment of a state religion. Nigeria as a secular state prohibits state religion and so the continuation of Hisbah religious police, calls for immediate proscription of the group. If not, then every state in Nigeria should have its own state religion.

In a secular state, everyone has the right to live according to the dictates of their own conscience. There's no law in the Nigerian constitution that bars people from taking alcoholic drinks, playing music, cohabitation of both sex, etc. So on which constitution are the Hisbah religious police operating? 

Obviously, the individuals who instituted the Hisbah religious police must have drafted a different law for themselves in Nigeria which supersedes the Nigerian constitution. This, in all ramifications, is tantamount to treason but the mainstream media in Nigeria turns a blind eye.

The section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended in 1999, gave Nigerians the right to "private life." In the same Nigerian constitution section 38, Article 8 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, it also gave Nigerians right to ''thought and religion." So any person or group of people infringing on those rights, should be proscribed as a terrorist organization, or better still, be charged for treason.

While Hisbah has proven to be unconstitutional and so should be proscribed, the Kano state commissioner for information, Muhammed Garba, in an interview with The ICIR, has stated clearly that Hisbah will punish anyone – Muslim or Christian – that goes against, not the laws of the federal government, but that of sharia laws of Hisbah religious police.

The questions are: why the shift of attention to Kanu instead of the Hisbah religious police that is destroying Nigerian businesses in the north all in the name of protecting their faith? Kanu and Hisbah religious police, who should be in court in a secular state? Should Christians then have their own religious police, enforce Christian laws and declare a Christian state?

The Biafra Times

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Edited By Nelson Ofokar Yagazie

Publisher: Eluwa Chidiebere Chinazu