www.africa-confidential.com 3 March 2000 Vol 41 No 5 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SOUTH AFRICA 3 NIGERIA Betting on the market Income taxes and the budget deficit In God's name are down and defence spending is The agitation for Islamic law is as much political and ethnic as it is up. That conservative combination religious; its proponents have weakened and divided the North in Finance Minister Manuel's budget on 23 February won The government appears to have negotiated a respite in its latest crisis. On 29 February the governors of five widespread plaudits. Two days northern states said they would stop plans to enforce Sharia (Islamic law). Vice-President Atiku Abubakar later, the USA's most conservative led negotiations with the governors and persuaded them to back down - at least for now. Among the political ratings agency, Standard & Poor's, weapons at his disposal was cutting finance to those state governments which ignored central government on raised South Africa's rating to the issue. Yet the Northern establishment is split over Sharia. Many of the older more pragmatic generation investment grade. of Northern leaders see it dividing and weakening the region and would welcome Abubakar’s move to stop it. Yet a younger generation of Northern politicians, several of whom owe their rise to military rule over the past ANGOLA 4 two decades, believe that Sharia is an important political and cultural tool for the North to fight against Southern domination. Cleaning diamonds The Sharia crisis is much more than a quarrel between elites, though. The campaign for Sharia now enjoys The government claims that its mass support in the North. A demonstration in its favour in Zamfara State last October drew several hundred latest shake-up in the diamond thousand supporters from other Northern states. Campaigners have again shown their ability to gets tens of sector - it has cancelled or thousands of supporters onto the street in recent weeks. Once Sharia is instituted, it is difficult for Muslims suspended all existing marketing to suspend it without appearing to act against God. contracts - will greatly increase its tax take. The measures are also The response by President Olusegun Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, and Vice-President Abubakar, a Sunni designed to convince the IMF that Muslim opposed to the Sharia plans, has been inadequate. Although the issue has been brewing since Zamfara it's serious about stopping introduced Sharia last October, the Obasanjo government trod too carefully: consumed by unrest in the Niger Delta corruption. and the growing militancy of the O’odua People’s Congress (OPC) in the South-West, the government was reluctant to state its position on Sharia or refer the matter to the courts for a constitutional judgment. Some lawyers contend that SENEGAL 5 Zamfara is in breach of federal law by using federal funds to finance the setting up ofSharia courts which contravene Nigeria’s secular constitution. The issue festered for almost four months. Then more than 400 people were killed in Passion for change Christian-Muslim clashes in Kaduna in the week ending 26 February and in related fighting in the South-Eastern towns of Aba and Umuahia before Abubakar could convene a meeting of the Northern governors to find a way out. For the first time President Abdou Diouf faces a second round in the presidential poll. His chances of Sharia wins kudos winning are much slimmer now The amiable Abubakar has inherited the Northern political network of the late military politician, General most of his opponents have rallied Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, and has for now got the governors’ cooperation. But at what price and for how long? behind the leading oppositionist, Abdoulaye Wade, the veteran Most of all, Sharia wins political kudos for those Northern governors without an effective or popular leader of the Parti Démocratique programme. It may also be part of a campaign by some Northerners to resist what they see as Obasanjo’s pro- Sénégalais. Southern government. A form of Sharia was in force in the North from the days of the Caliphate until Independence. Under indirect rule, Britain banned specific punishments such as amputations and stonings. TANZANIA 6 The first Premier of the Northern region, the Sardauna of Sokoto Ahmadu Bello, reviewed the legal system and introduced a penal code for the North which is largely based on Sharia precepts but again rules out Offshore turbulence amputations and stonings. Ahmadu Bello’s formula provided a workable consensus for both the majority Muslims and minority Christians in the North. The Governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani, has broken that After months of threats, President consensus by introducing full Sharia. Salmin Amour has announced that he won't run for a third five-year Sani offered public assurances that the Sharia criminal code, like the civil code, would apply only to Muslims. Yet term in office. But the Salmin era he has since suggested that Islamic law might have to apply to everyone ‘in terms of crimes against the state’. In early may have fatally damaged the February, a Muslim man was flogged for having premarital sex and his girlfriend is due to face the same fate. Another ruling CCM's electoral chances on man who runs a motorbike taxi service was prosecuted for giving a woman a lift on his pillion. the the islands. Governor Sani’s move was approved by many Northerners, frustrated by growing crime and official corruption. The governors of Kaduna and Kano agreed to examine the issue; pro-Sharia Kaduna Muslims POINTERS 8 demonstrated in favour; Kaduna Christians reacted by marching under the slogan: ‘Sharia is not Y2K compliant’. Violence broke out during the Christian demonstration and there was an attack, apparently by some Mozambique, USA/ of their associates, on the Governor’s office. Undeterred by the violence in Kaduna, the governors of Sokoto Africa & Zimbabwe and Niger signed laws establishing the Sharia criminal code in their states too, and Kano and Yobe are considering it. Killer floods; quarrelsome lobby; and running on empty. The proponents of Sharia claim to defend the heart of Northern identity. Yet the idea of solidarity - ‘one North, one people, one destiny’ - promoted by Northern leaders has been ripped apart by the spectacle of northern Christians and 3 March 2000 Africa Confidential Vol 41 No 5 Muslims killing each other. In the past, Northern political leaders tended to play over patronage to grow violent in towns such as Zangon-Kataf, reviving ancient down religious differences, to preserve Northern solidarity in the face of the ethnic and religious disputes. Cosmopolitan Kaduna attracted dissidents. richer, better educated South. Northern religious leaders, especially Muslims, Islamic proselytisers and their Christian fundamentalist counterparts eroded have preached tolerance because, as beneficiaries of patronage from a secular the city’s tolerance, recruiting followers through state radio and television, and state, they would be the first targets of a religious insurgency. They also foresaw bombarding newspapers with Christian and Islamic tracts. intra-Islamic conflicts, between the majority Sunni and minority Shia, and The Northern barons may be waking up to the new explosiveness of the among Sunni sub-groups, such as the Tijjaniya, Qadriya and the puritanical Yan Sharia issue, especially since the Kaduna street mobs moved close to their Izala sect. luxury homes in the city’s leafy avenues. They know that resistance to Sharia by Christian officers from the Middle Belt and the North would further weaken Sani and his Sharia allies Northern control of the military, already damaged by the breakdown of the In the more stable 1980s, there was much ambivalence about figures such as the command structure under Abacha. There are some signs of organised late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi and his Saudi Arabian-financed Yan Izala sect. resistance from moderate Northerners and Middle-Belters, such as the United Northerners recall the Maitatsine riots in Kano in the early 1980s, when naïve Democratic Forum set up by Suleman Takuma, a Nupe from Niger State, who politicians and business people promoted Mohammed Marwa, a charlatan opposes both the APC and Sharia. from Cameroon, whose bloody uprising was put down at the cost of more than Beneath the religious divide lie gaps between Nigeria’s more than 200 5,000 lives by troops commanded by Major Halilu Akilu, later President language groups. Cutting across religious affiliation is ethnic identity: not just Ibrahim Babangida’s security chief. between the the three biggest ethnic groups, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba, but The House of Assembly in Kano, an almost totally Muslim state, has voted between the many sub-groups among the 20 million Yoruba or between the in favour of Sharia although the State Governor is less keen. Older Kanoites separate but related Ijaw peoples scattered across the Niger Delta. Regionalism remember the Maitatsine horrors, younger voices are less cautious. After the is based on the groups which dominate the regions: Hausa-Fulani in the North, proposal for Sharia was presented to the Kano State Assembly, different Yoruba in the West, Igbo in the east. At Independence in 1960, the regions were factions went off to Libya, Sudan, Saudi and other Islamic countries for fund- the main political units, exercising power over education, health and the budget raising and doctrinal consultations. Ibrahim Zakzaky, a leading Shia with through regional governments and elected assemblies. Many Nigerians, sick strong links to Iran, has denounced the introduction of Sharia within ‘a secular of repeated failures by the central government, hanker for the old pattern of framework’, and seems to be holding out for a Northern Islamic state. devolved power to the regions. In the vanguard of the Sharia campaign are Sani and his allies in Zamfara.