There was outcry from different quarters in the nation recently when it was announced that the government of Kaduna State was enacting a law that would require religious preachers to be registered before they could be allowed to preach in the State.
To be sure, Kaduna as a State has had more than its fair share of ethnic and religious conflicts over the years. There is clearly a suspicion, at least in the circles of government, that some of the conflicts were caused, or substantially stoked, by religious preachers of different faiths who stirred up the public with their fiery oratory.
A whole raft of hostile reactions arose immediately the new law was announced. The predominant narrative was that it was a frontal attack on ‘Freedom of Worship’. Christians and Muslims united to denounce the Law.
In a country with more than two hundred ethnic groups and languages, as well as religious affiliation covering the principal Abrahamic religions and countless local forms of worship, it was easy to see the move as a not-so-subtle attempt by one religion to control its rivals and diminish their footprint in the public space.
Religion is a very important aspect of the lives of Nigerians. Sadly, it is all-too-often involved in defining or exacerbating the fracture lines in the fabric of social harmony. In purely statistical terms, the ‘majority’ religion differs from state to state, and sometimes from one local government to another. As a minimum requirement for getting such a variegated patchwork of different nationalities to call itself a nation, and despite its much-advertised flaws, the current constitution of Nigeria conveys that the nation is a secular state, where citizens would be left in freedom to practice their religions without interference or harassment from others.
The truth is that even this ‘common-sense’ minimum requirement is regularly breached. Governments – State and Federal ‘donate’ public money for the building of places of religious worship. They use public money to sponsor Muslim and Christian pilgrims on religious pilgrimage. There are the subsisting anomalies of a ‘personal’ Law belonging to one religion being applied in some states, and even being used to adjudicate in ‘criminal’ matters. And Nigeria is a member of OIC – a ‘religious’ body by the very fact of its name. Despite the regular protestations of succeeding governments about not favouring any religion, the reality is a mutual wariness and a readiness to distrust the other’s intentions and actions.
This is the context into which the Kaduna ‘preacher-registration’ law has been birthed.
And yet it is true that, especially in some battle-line areas where strong geographical, ethnic and religious lines are drawn, some ‘preachers’ preach ‘hate’ messages that may stir up the people and lead to breakdown of law and order.
In heavily ‘religious’ parts of the world, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, the government makes an effort to ‘control the message’ through a system of patronage and participation. This is relatively easy to do in the ‘mainstream’ religious sects. The real problem, politically, is in the fringe or ‘radical’ extremes.
A system of ‘Preacher-Registration’, however it is dressed up, is an effort to ‘screen out’ the ‘lunatic fringe’ and ensure that only people with a ‘mainstream’ message get access to the people.
It is a reasonable desire. But does it work?
It is intriguing to think of what might have happened if such a law had been in operation in Borno State before the beginning of the Boko Haram crisis. Mohammed Yusuf, from all accounts, started off with a relatively small congregation, and espoused a doctrine that was clearly separate from the mainstream. Would he have been ‘registered’ by a government agency if there was such a requirement? The answer, surprisingly, is not an obvious ‘No’, given the behavior of some of the officials in the State at the time!
In Christian historiography, the reason the Jewish Sanhedrin persecuted Jesus Christ and insisted he should be crucified was that his message was not ‘mainstream’, according to the definitions of the times!
Christ’s crucifixion, and the ensuing persecution of his Disciples, leading many of them to die in gory circumstances, were not displays of mindless cruelty but efforts at rigidly enforcing ‘Registration’ and ‘Correctness’. The Christian Church may be in a state of flux today, with ‘mainstream’ denominations losing membership and influence, and less institutionalized ‘Pentecostals’ on the rise. In Nigeria, there are Pentecostal congregations with huge followership and vast resources, without a clear hierarchy of doctrinal or even financial supervision. But that is another matter – for the Christians themselves to deal withas they see fit.
Registration of Preachers, attractive as it may seem to Mallam El-Rufai, even granting the possibility that it is with the best of intentions, is not the way forward.
If ‘Registration’ is not the answer, how is ‘religious preaching’ to be prevented from causing chaos in society?
The answer is Law and Order. Unfortunately, this requires strong, independent institutions, which Nigeria lacks at present, but which it must create, in order to survive as a modern nation. Anybody actually seen preaching ‘Hate’ should be documented and prosecuted using the Law of the land, which must be impartial in content and impartially executed. Any sect or body institutionally or doctrinally preaching hate as its message must be sanctioned, but only through the process of The Law.
It is what civilized societies try to do, albeit imperfectly. This is why even ‘crazies’ such as ‘The Church of Satan’ (with which our own FFK had a hilarious exchange on Twitter recently!) are able to show their faces in the public space. They are a joke to some, and annoyance to many. But if tomorrow they started to carry out human sacrifice on their altar or preach that other people should be shot on the streets of America, the Police would be in their face pronto!
It is not a perfect freedom, but it is all we have – for now.
Femi Olugbile
