The Shariah Crisis in Nigeria: An Insider View+1

Abstract

The Sharia imbroglio was precipitated by the official declaration of Zamfara as a Sharia state[1]. This declaration resuscitated the Islamic criminal jurisprudence, which had been compromised by the penal code in the formative years of modern criminal justice system in colonial Nigeria[2]. The crisis epitomizes an ideological clash between the positivist and sociological jurisprudential fixation of law. The command theory of law, and the societal's (wholly or partial) perception of what the law should be were stretched to their limits.



The Sharia impasse makes a re-assessment of its utilitarian value within Nigeria's socio-cultural milieu, both urgent and imperative. What degree of popularity and acceptability does a law require to achieve its objectives in the context of Nigeria's heterogeneity? What is the relevance of the source and constituents of a law to its acceptability and conformability? How could the re introduction of the Sharia criminal jurisprudence inflict a wound so deep on the nation's psyche and distort its socio-cultural land scapes with such a seismic and reverberative force? If a law is meant to foster peace and orderliness, how could it be the object of conflicts and dissections – a supreme irony that the Sharia now is? This thesis essays a dispassionate view of the Sharia's nature, history, potentials, resurgence and prospects within Nigeria's body polity and constitutional democracy.



IFE PsychologIA Volume 9 no 3, 2001, pp. 44-58