Chapter Ten
Religion and the modern State: Comparative analysis of religions in civil society in Nigeria and France
p. 151-168
Texte intégral
Introduction
1Hard political reality dictates that an administration should seek to comprehend the inner workings of the society which it governs if it is to be effective and if it is to avoid or minimise social friction and direct opposition or resistance to its policies. An in-depth sociological analysis is therefore necessary to understudy the relationship or, rather, the rapport de forces between political authority and religious power, since political authority has been variously described as the "exercise of power" in a society of peoples who are, to varying degrees, positively or negatively influenced by some religion or supernatural beliefs.
2The possible role assigned to religion or assumed by it varies in view of the different philosophical traditions, historical origins and cultural components of each society or political entity. Disparities occur even within the borders of many countries due to the same elements that have been evoked. Religious symbols or secular objects and places with a religiously loaded history are rife. This means that, irrespective of the ideological inclination or personal conviction of the citizen (or even the radicalism or conservatism of state authorities) on certain subjects of social importance, neutrality is an ideal which, with the best of intentions, is not realisable within the foreseeable future. Which brings us to the penultimate question that gives a theoretical or structural framework to this study: what role is there for religion in today’s society? One could also be tempted to ask, concerning the two illustrative cases chosen to back up the theoretical analysis: why Nigeria and France? What have the two countries got in common to warrant a comparative study?
3Essentially, and in spite of any known similarity that might be established between the role of religion in the two countries, the choice is due, firstly, to the availability of sources of information on, or the knowledge of, the areas and, secondly, to the differences between the two countries and what they are seen to represent – two different strains. Nigeria is a peculiar model that aptly illustrates the Black African situation in which there existed a multiplicity of religions and political systems before the advent of European colonialism. France, on the other hand, represents a different model, that of a modern society with an ancient history of domination by a single religious organisation, the Roman Catholic Church. There is convergence between the two countries, however, because, like a host of other nations, both of them are searching, in their different ways, for an equilibrium that will not destabilise political society beyond manageable levels of operation.
4It is not the objective of this study to dictate the ideal form of separation between religion and politics. It simply attempts to show the wisdom in the separation of religion and politics, while at the same time identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each model as they stand out.
Concept definition, theoretical models and typologies
5While discussing the status of religion in civil society, two fundamental concepts, sometimes mutually conflicting or contradicting, are often used. These are the concepts of equality and liberty. Equality in society being the most active structural ingredient in the breeding of individuality, it has a basic recognised principle that each adult person can and has the moral obligation to make his own choice on an equal footing with any other. The main default attributed to this concept is that it seems to ignore the fact that natural resources and individual human abilities are far from being equal. The unequal distribution of physical strength, health and wealth demands, for instance, that he who lacks depends on he who has.
6Religious thinkers argue that in the face of natural inequality between men, it is only religious moral that bridges the gap by requiring each person to be "his brother’s keeper". This, of course, reveals the basic tendency in man to compete rather to cooperate. Even if we go by Max Weber’s famous formula according to which the right to monopolise "the rightful use of physical force" belongs to the State alone, one still has to admit that physical force means power. But there are other kinds of pressures, psychological or social, which, by employing fully their influence", can render the threat or application of physical force impotent. And that is where the role of religion comes in. For, beyond all of its rites, traditions, outward manifestations and symbols, religion controls more of the spiritual than the physical.
7The other side of the coin is liberty or freedom (freedom to believe or not to believe) which is also not free from its critics. The most prominent of these criticisms is that individual liberties often contradict each other, thereby abridging their absolute character. The axiom is well known that "your liberty stops where my nose begins". In the end, it is the liberty of the majority or the stronger party that overrides that of the minorities or the weaker parties in any given system, except where there are built-in checks and balances to protect minority opinion.
8Religion in general, be it Catholicism or Anglicanism or Islam, tends to stress equality wherever it finds itself a minority in a given political equation, but otherwise emphasises freedom or liberty of the majority, it is evident that there are no clear-cut demarcation lines between the two ideas since they are often interchangeable in practice.
9There are two widely recognised constitutional models used by political scientists to analyse the status of religion in modern society. But, in line with a later development in the field and for reasons which will be explained appropriately, we deem it fit to add a third.
10Firstly, there is the adoption by a State of an official religion as State religion, with all accompanying privileges for the adopted doctrine as well as discrimination against all others in varying degrees. Such is the situation in the Republic of Ireland and in Middle Eastern and Asian Muslim countries. Pakistan, for example, directly owes its origin to the very religious ideology of Islam for the mobilisation of its citizens. A modern-day variant of this model, especially concerning Western European countries that have outgrown the adoption of State religion,1 is the recognition of certain religions as having a privileged role in the context of a secular state. It is into this category, more man any other, that France fits.
11Secondly, there is the exemplary model of the secular State that has never adopted in its history an official religion and where sometimes, as in the United States of America, not only is the State apparatus and machinery of government formally and constitutionally separated from that of religions, but the State is formally forbidden to interfere in the religious domain. It is under this model that a majority of Black African countries can be regrouped that never had a single dominant religion identifiable with the Sate apparatus in spite of attempts in that direction by the colonial powers.
12The third model which we have added, with the full knowledge that it stands to be attacked and criticised, is the Marxist political doctrine on religion which, in its theoretical form, is an outright negation of the first model. There actually exists a divergence of opinion among scholars on the exact interpretation to give the Marxist doctrine of the total replacement of religious influence in society by the structural influence of the State. Some argue that State opposition to religion is in reality politics of religion, even if negative, because the State is motivated by ideological reasons to combat what it sees as a rival in securing the allegiance of citizens. Others want to classify Marxist regimes outright with the "theocratic" States (as in the first model) which are guided by certain religious morals as espoused by a certain religious organisation. In that context, atheism would be the official religion of the State while Karl Marx would be seen as its prophet, just as Moses, Jesus or Mohammed before him. Consequently, the writings of Marx and Engels would stand in for sacred scriptures just as the Bible and the Koran, while those of Lenin, Mao, Tito or Trotsky would be nothing short of the Early Church Fathers for Christianity, and the Sunna and Hadiths for Islam.
13While these parallels drawn may sound simplistic to critics and even ridiculous to Marx who spent a great deal of his intellectual strength in combating religious forces, it nevertheless highlights the importance of a cohesive ideology even in socialist political structures, just as in those mobilised by more "orthodox" "opiums of the people".2 Replying to the opinions expressed by Bruno Bauer in Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question) Marx, in 1843, argued that in spite of all the political achievements of the French revolution in liberating people from feudal yokes, it did not go far enough in that the influence of religion was not uprooted with the corrupt clergy that had been exploiting it. The question of integrating the Jews into the Roman Catholic French society was an unresolvable non-question because the problem was not one of religious differences between the people but of the status of religion in civil society. For, by liberating the State from religious and aristocratic domination, the revolution actually benefited religion by emancipating it from clerical servitude and transforming it into a popular free-for-all affair. Man, he said, can only be liberated from religion by "banishing it from public law into private law". In Marx’s opinion, religion had been further transformed from being the "essence of the community" into being "the essence of its differences". Ironically, Marx even had a word of praise for the role of religion in America where it had effectively been turned into a "purely individual affair". The concluding text that summarises this Marxist doctrine of the role of organised religion in a political formula actually contrasts directly with the socialist option:
The division of man into Jew and citizen, into protestant and citizen, into religious man and citizen, is not an untruth against citizenship, it is not a way of diverting political emancipation, it is political emancipation itself, it is the political way of freeing oneself from religion [...]. Really it is not the so-called Christian State, the one that recognises Christianity as its foundation, as State Religion, thereby discriminating against other religions, which is the accomplished State; rather it is the atheist State, the democratic State, the State which relegates religion to the rank of other common affairs in civil society. [...] The so-called Christian State is simply a non-State, because it is not Christianity as a religion, but only the human element of the Christian religion which can be fulfilled in really human creation.3
The case for separation between religion and politics
14Probably nowhere is the dictum power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely more relevant than in a situation where there is a concentration of temporal and spiritual powers in the hands of one and the same authority. The seriousness of the situation becomes more prominent when one realises that it is not just the dogma and tradition of a religion that is at stake but the freedom of man to choose and to be.
15All things considered, it is very probably not in the long-term interest of any of the parties concerned, be it religion or the State or the individual, to confiscate power, both temporal and spiritual. For while it is said that the authority of the State is based on coercion, its welfare is based on consensus just as much as that of religion is based on conviction. Any other way results either in dissent or protest or sabotage. Under any political system, it is a general tendency for the freedom of expression, of assembly, and of movement to include, at least in theory, a guaranteed freedom of religious belief and organisation since both have to do with personal liberties of the individual to choose friends, associates, occupation, residence and property, among others.
16The case for religious freedom can thus be said to be four-dimensional:
it heightens individual conscience and liberty;
it minimises religious conflict between different communities of believers;
it has been a constant fact of history that political stability is highly elusive with an underlying measure of religious freedom;
the expression of a genuine and lasting religious belief is wholly dependent and consequential upon the degree of freedom of choice. Wherever physical and/or psychological constraint is applied, a deceptive façade of piety is installed to cover the deep-seated unbelief, thus the purity of faith is corrupted by hypocrites playing to the gallery.
This affords an instructive instance of generalization that coercion in affairs of belief, conscience or religion is self-defeating. Coercion can achieve verbal consent, but often at such a high price in apathy, resentment and mistrust that it frustrates the achievement of the genuine community of belief which was its purpose.4
17A very pertinent case study was that of the initial intolerance of a section of those Puritans that have come to be known in American history as the Pilgrim Fathers. In this respect, Ellen White, a 19th century visionary and religious leader during the great mid-century spiritual revival in America writes:
A simple profession of religion being sufficient to hold a public office, a large number of people that were foreign to the Christian life came into the church. Little by little, the churches filled up with unconverted souls. Even among the pastoral body men were not only teaching errors, but were completely unaware of the transforming power of the Holy Spirits.5
18Her verdict therefore is very unequivocal from the point of view of those who prefer the purity of religion to its political dynamics:
The union of the Church and State in whatever degree it may be may appear to bring the world closer to the church but its only real consequence is to turn the church into a worldly institutions.6
19The history of religion in France especially has amply shown that in societies where political institutions have been subordinated to religious authorities, modern democratic or popular opposition to the age-long abuse and oppression of these political authorities implies equal popular opposition to the religious allies who have abetted the oppression. Believers in such a hypothesis will then find themselves opposing normally laudable values such as equality and freedom in society in the name of defending religious values. Similarly, secular minds that had nothing a priori against religion, so long as they are left to their own conscience and individual right to unbelief, will then start campaigning against religion and all the moralising values it is perceived to stand for. Religion in society becomes as fragile as the political structures which it had supported in greed and wanton pleasures.
20Although a United Nations declaration has it that neither the adoption of a religion by the State nor the recognition of a belief by it constitutes a basic violation of human rights,7 experience has shown mat such adoption of a State religion has never failed to generate its own share of discrimination and sometimes outright persecution, especially whenever membership of the official religion is a condition to full citizenship, as is the case under the Islamic constitutions, or the exercise of civil and political rights. It is sometimes a prerequisite to the right to own landed property, as the State religion is considered the sole reposition of religious truth, an ideology developed in christianised Europe and transported to the colonies in Africa, Asia and South America.
21This theoretical survey has clearly demonstrated the fact that real freedom of religious worship is not guaranteed except with accompanying safeguards to protect its right to manifest in public and private. The various external symbols that will be discussed in the political experiences of Nigeria and France include the act and place of worship, religious processions, pilgrimages (internal and international), marriages and funerals, holy days and holidays, dissemination of knowledge, training of ministerial personnel, doctrinal taboos (marriage, oaths, military service, saluting the flag, medical treatment etc.), status and functions of ministers, and public display of religious symbols.
The geopolitics of religion in the French Republic
22Modern French tradition in church/state relations is peculiar and unique, the basic formula having been dictated over two hundred years ago by the violent collusion of two social forces – the Roman Catholic church (popularly called the Church of France) and the French revolution of 1789. This is, for example, a direct opposite of the American situation where protesting Christians sought refuge after fleeing the church-controlled State persecution of Europe. It is also different from the Nigerian variant which has never experienced any organised religious domination at the national level.
23At first glance, the question of the role of religion in French society and government would seem to be limited to the current debate on the integration or non-integration of the three million strong immigrant Arab minority into a society where 81 per cent of the 55 million inhabitants claim to be Roman Catholics, or to the thorny question of State and church control and finance of educational institutions; or even confined to the problem of religious sects and radical secular ideologies that are seen to threaten the existence of orderly administration of the State. Because of the 1905 constitutional principle which separated the domains and administrations of the church and the State in a secular polity, many scholars treating the status of religion in France may be tempted to abide by the text without looking behind the lines to ascertain its origins and its application. Of course, France is not Northern Ireland, Lebanon or Iran, but we believe it a useful exercise to disengage a number of close-up observations of a comparative nature.
24If religion in general and the Roman Catholic church in particular has virtually no powers in the French State today, one cannot say as much for its profound influence due to the implantation of its structures in the very fabric of State and society. While no more than 12 per cent of the whole population are practising Catholics, more than 80 per cent would rise up in arms against anything that is seen as threatening their joint cultural heritage – be it the private school system, or town and village traditional values or cultures which are entrenched in Catholicism. For instance, all cathedrals are reserved for worship, run by Roman Catholic priests but owned by the local communities or the state, if they have been declared as national historical monuments. There are laws which protect them from secular use or abuse, which finance their upkeep and pay reparation or renovation bills.
25However, contemporary French society is caught in a contradiction between its heavily catholicised structures and its past. The Christian church of old that led society into the apogee of its civilisation fell with the old regime into political disgrace, leaving historical residues into which contemporary industrial French culture has settled uneasily. According to Danielon, prayer, inasmuch as it constitutes a legitimate pursuit of man in his search for personal fulfilment, now has to be considered as a political (i.e. public) problem. The problem, unlike in the United States, is not simply whether or not it is constitutional to offer public prayers in public schools but whether citizens have a right to give religious education to their children, and if yes, who pays for such education (the church or the State). In short, what role is there for religion in a democratic state built on the principles of equal treatment for its citizens who at the same time have total freedom of choice in life, citizens who are entitled to education by virtue of being tax payers, but who, being religious, at the same time opt to give their children a religious education?
26Pursuing this argument, Danielon writes:
If the function of churches is to make worship possible, churches would not be justifying their existence without achieving worship. Churches which remain a sociological residue of sacral societies or mechanical gests would continue to function. [...] these churches could be considered as dead wood and legitimately liquidated. In other words, churches should fight to justify their right to have a place in the technological civilisation of tomorrow. They have to show, by their vitality, that there really is a function of that civilisation that, only they can accomplish and that they are capable of fulfilling that role.8
27With the industrial society and modernisation came the development and expansion of an individualistic approach to life. Most seasoned observers who are objective enough not to be blinded by religious ideology, would admit that, in France, as in the rest of the industrialised world, it is essentially this individualism that is killing religion and piety much more than any legislation or corporate political conspiracy by the State. Individual interests are no longer identical within the same family thus influencing personal choices in political, social and even religious preferences. Individual contact is evaporating with the cold, impersonal computers, factories, television and government. It is this new mentality of forced isolation and loneliness that is most likely responsible for drug, sex and child abuse, suicide, breakdown of law and order etc. Thus the progressive death of religion in social life proves to be inversely proportional to the progressive annihilation of society.
28Nevertheless, it would really take a sociological novice to believe that clericalisation of the State is potent enough to stop the process of secularisation, since even clerics themselves are increasingly secularised and have no ready answers to modernisation.
29In France, notwithstanding the Catholic fabric of which society is made, one of the most vivid illustrations of the loss of influence by the church to the profit of a secular State is the number of liberal laws passed over the years, and over official church opposition, especially those concerning the family which is the last bastion of hope for a renaissance of the church – legalised abortion, marriage certification by the elected mayor instead of an ordained priest, authorised divorce and remarriage, legalised contraception, homosexuality and unmarried couples etc. The next in line in this series would probably be surrogate mothers. The majority of these liberal laws were passed after François Mitterrand came to power in May 1981 and constituted a socialist government a majority of whose leaders are self-confessed atheists, agnostics and unbelievers. Thus, it did not appear to shock the average Frenchman each time former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius declared, during his term of office, that he was an "unbeliever" or whenever president Mitterrand declared publicly that he did not know whether or not God existed. That is a president who will probably be buried in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris when he dies. Of course, none of this stops the average Frenchman from gasping: "Oh mon Dieu!"
30In France, there are two distinct stages of laicization of society: serial and textual. The state justified its deep financial commitment to, and a certain administrative control over, religious matters by legitimising religious needs, placing them on the same level as medical and educational needs, and treating ministers of religion on the same level as doctors and teachers. Plurality of religion was also recognised in as far as the religious activities of the unrecognised (non concordat) groups conformed with the law of the land. In this respect, the state stands as a referee to ensure fair play9
31The second stage of this process of laicization in post-revolutionary France was marked by an institutional dissociation from religion when evolving public opinion no longer considered organised public religion as essential, to corporate society, being socially marginalised. Its old role was therefore replaced by new state institutions. Religion passed into private domain with no real legitimacy, due to the absence of consensus and rational objective criteria to determine religious truth. Moreover, plurality of religion is passively assured by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of association in conformity with private law and with little emphasis on religion or the spiritual. It is the citizen’s right to choose and to associate that is guaranteed, not the right of religious truth per se. State involvement in both stages is different in that, according to Banbérot,
while in the first stage the State is incompetent without being indifferent, during the second stage, the State is incompetent and indifferent in matters of religion.10
32Protestant alliance with the rationalists in their struggle for secularisation of the State and its separation from the church started at a period when the social relevance and utility of religion in society was not put to question but this has largely gone beyond the limits even imagined or sought for. There is still a lot of hard feelings between Protestants and Catholics, the former being accused by the latter of being the authors of the secularisation process that is annihilating religion in the French society while the former lash back that it was the Catholics and their king that revoked the edict of Nantes and unleashed a savage persecution on doctrinal non-conformists. It was for them, they claim, simply a matter of struggle for survival.
Internal divergencies and religious minorities
33It will be well to recall here that religious organisation in France cannot just be limited to the Roman Catholic, Israelite and mainline Protestant churches (Lutheran and Reformed) but that, apart from the little groups that are often referred to as religious sects, there is another judicial regime that operates in two French local governments of Alsace and Moselle. Still operating under the current concordat system of West Germany, the fate of these two religions has been closely linked with that of the regional border politics between the German and French States.
34While the principle of religious liberty is espoused, there is still a distinction between officially recognised confessions, whose ministerial personnel are treated as civil servants,11 and the others who are subjected to the procedure of administrative authorisation before they can exist, while ministers are officially posted to teach religious knowledge in schools. It is the Head of State that appoints bishops for the different synods and the Pope only confers on them his canonical blessings. Jewish rabbis are required to have French nationality and should have no other profession. The president of the Lutheran directorate is appointed by the government. All of these are in return for official recognition and conferment of a civil servant status. It is this particular situation that allows the University of Strasbourg to have two faculties of Religion, one Catholic and the other Protestant.
35Then comes the situation of other religions or groups at the national level. As for Islam, the political status of a majority of the Muslim population as foreign immigrant workers makes the difference between French Islam (that of French citizens converted to Islam and of second generation immigrant children born in France and therefore French citizens) and Islam in France, that is, the religion of the North African Arab immigrant workers in French society. The former, it is estimated, has one million adherents and the latter three million adherents. Composed of foreigners, the bulk of the Muslim population in France has no voting or other political rights that can constitute them into a viable political force. Islam is therefore very much a private religion, with its "mosques" without minarets sandwiched in apartment buildings, factory basements or workshop corner rooms. Islam in France is therefore marginal in spite of its being the second most important religion, after Catholicism. There is however an increasing demand to be heard, to be recognised and to be reckoned with. Because of the numerical importance of the immigrant population in industry, Islam is increasingly becoming a factor in French trade unionism and in the ghettos of French cities such as Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Noting this trend in the automobile industry, for instance, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux asks: Is Islam a means of suppressing perturbations inside the industry and allowing the emergence of new leaders?. She points out that it is increasingly common for Imams to be appointed with the approval of certain Unions, and that these imams, being thus acceptable to workers, act more effectively as mediators in conflicts and as spokesmen.12
36As was outlined in the introductory remarks, the last set of groups to be dealt with in this section are the deviant groups referred to as sects. This definition usually includes, by general French usage, certain groups whose doctrines are seen, either out of the past experience or out of ignorance of what they believe, to be out of step with mainline Christianity. The term itself, from its initial designation of Christianity by the ancient Jews in Antioch, is very heavily loaded with prejudice and is demeaning.
37For all the alarm expressed over the years by the generality of French public opinion and the media, and in spite of various legislative attempts to confront this problem and control the proliferation of "deviant" or even dangerous religious and ideological tendencies, French laws are helplessly incapacitated by the constitutional guarantee of individual liberties. No concrete laws are promulgated specifically to regiment the activities of religious groups, either recognised or tolerated.13 There is also an increasing number of associations founded by individuals who feel threatened by the doctrines of these groups and who do not hesitate to go on the offensive within legal limits.
38In conclusion, it is significant to note the growth of superstitions and the occult in the French society. There is hardly a politician or a public figure who does not have a private fortune teller or a marabout who is charged with foreseeing the future and removing all foreseeable obstacles and complications: health, political opposition, accidents, etc. Using the term "Madame Soleil" is already a part of the French language that implies knowledge of the future or intuition. A new form of religious influence is fast gaining ground, a form that does not necessarily have anything to do with established or official Christianity. But the question still remains: "What role is there for religion in French society?
The mosque, the church and the State in Nigeria
39Nigerian religious history followed a rather passive, uneventful course until the coup d’état of January 1966. Events that followed led to the civil war which has been presented variously as an ethnic and religious conflict. Many series of events that have succeeded each other since then have not helped the development of religion as a social cement in the Nigerian Republic.
40The very first dilemma that frustrates any serious attempt to analyse the actual problem of religion in Nigeria is that very few facts are verifiable. Starting with the population census, not a single credible head count has taken place for 25 years and even the figures of the 1963 census are still hotly debated. Thus it is impossible to say with a reasonable degree of certainty the exact numerical strength of the adherents of the various religions. For Islam which is advertised even in official Nigerian Government publications as the "most widely spread religion" in the country, Muslim scholars and clergy have tried over the years to re-interpret the wording "most widely spread" to re-read religion of the majority" of Nigerians, which is not exactly saying the same thing.
41The last nationally accepted set of figures and proportions of strength is set forth as follows:
Numerical strength of Nigeria religion in percentage of total14
Year | Muslims | Christian | Traditional African Religions |
1931 | 43.8 | 6.2 | 50.0 |
1952 | 45.0 | 21.0 | 34.0 |
1963 | 47.2 | 34.6 | 18.2 |
42However, in his acceptance speech at the $1UU, UU0 King Faisa International Award for service to Islam in 1985, Sheikh Abubakar Mahmood Gumi advanced the figure of 100 million as the current population of Nigeria out of which he claimed 70 million are Muslims. Interestingly, even the rather conservative Muslim scholar Professor Abdulrrahman Doi contents himself with the more modest figure of 65 %,15 an estimate which would still suggest that the totality of the "pagan" population (18.2 %) and some of the Christians have been converted to Islam. The fact, however, is that many adherents of traditional African religions are still very much around and even prospering, as illustrated by the strong Ifa cult of the University of Ife which counts among its faithfuls, the former Vice Chancellor of the university. Professor Wande Abimbola.
43Doubt can equally be expressed in connection with Christian theologians and church leaders who simply assert that Nigeria is fifty per cent Muslim and fifty per cent Christian. Needless to say, there is no trace, even of fictitious figures, to back up this claim which is made mainly in order to fight for equal say in national affairs. For how does one explain the fact that from 1952 to 1963, Islam progressed by 2.0 % and that, twenty-five years later, it was still not able to go beyond the fifty per cent mark, despite the fact that Christians often criticise Muslims for their high birth rate and polygamous family life?
44If we have spent so much time on the analysis of the numbers given, it is because the political status of religion in today’s Nigeria is being debated, with the debates revolving essentially around whether or not a majority of Nigerians are Muslims, and if yes, why Islam should not be democratically declared or adopted, de juré or de facto, as the State religion. Today, every little gesture or policy statement (be it population policy, land use decree, foreign policy issues like relations with Israel or Libya by government or public officials) is read through the spectacles of religious strategy. Hence the questions: What, if anything, went wrong? Can religion still be harnessed to contribute to the unity of the Nigerian nation or is it destined to be an evolving course of divisiveness?
The politics of secularism in the Nigerian State
45Since Nigeria achieved independence in October 1960, there has been a conscious effort to correct regional anomalies in education, professional training and equal job opportunities. But nothing has been done, no constructive attempt has been made to diffuse the religious time bomb that had been set off before 1960. In administration, the principle of "federal character" is widely recognised and accepted, even if half-heartedly, by those states in the Republic that feel they are being penalised for their early head start in education. On the religious scene, however, the tendency has been to wait until a crisis looms before reacting to it, rather than make concrete plans to lay down a definite structure into which religion will be set within the political context.
46Religious freedom as a principle was not even argued under the 1963 constitution. Any inference of such was only drawn from well-intentioned and well angled interpretation of the section that allows freedom of association, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. This was perhaps a conscious effort by those who drafted the document to avoid sensitive issues while the Republic was still so young and fragile, but the fact remains that the constitutional foundation laid was fragile for a nation that had no common history, be it in the political or religious domain. In the absence of any constitutional specifications in this direction, therefore, different administrations between 1960 and 1979 were left to walk a political tight rope in the religious domain.
47The only major exception to the general trend was the attempt made by the Ojukwu administration in the short-lived history of Biafra to use Christianity in order to mobilise international support while it was the ethnic factor that was the actual focus of mobilisation on the home front. It is a fact also that Islam as a political ideology has been consistently used and is still very potent as a strategy of mobilisation by the northern political elite to create for itself an ideological power base that cannot be threatened by any rival ideology. That also is understandable.
48But by far the most explosive issue that has given rise to controversy, violence and civil strife in Nigeria has been the debate on the status of shari’a courts on a national level and the hagglings over whether or not Nigeria should be declared a secular State and, if so, what definition to give to this secularism. Would it mean the abstention of the State from all questions of religion, as in the United States, or would it signify an active recognition of, and participation in, all religions manifested on the territory (which in a certain way would be similar, if not identical, to the French or European systems)? This debate, launched within the ranks of the constitution drafting committee in 1978, nearly broke up the constituent assembly in 1979 before a compromise was arrived at which allowed the adoption of another watered down statement that lends itself to several and sometimes contradictory interpretations. Even though remarkable progress was made on the 1963 constitution, it was evident that Nigerian policy makers still lacked the political courage to brave extremist criticisms and do what they believed was right. Christians and Muslims broke into two opposing camps and played up to the galleries of their respective constituencies.
49Stating the case for a complete and umbilical separation of the Nigerian State from religion in the quest for national cohesion, Yusuf Bala Usman states, regarding article 17 of the constitution:
This clearly allows the state to be associated, identified or linked to any religion as long as this stops short of adoption. This provision could only have been proposed with the deliberate intention of allowing the president, the governors and other public officers to manipulate religious differences by associating or identifying with religion. Otherwise, knowing fully well the chaos that has been caused in this country because political parties and governments have cynically manipulated religious belief, they have no excuse whatsoever for not being unambiguous and categorical in this matter.16
50The civil strife and religious tumult that have caused the loss of many lives, starting with the Maitatsine riots in Kano right up to the recent disturbances in Kaduna state in 1987, could be said to be the result of a lack of decisive policy on religious matters. Whatever political administration has the guts to face this problem and settle it in a definite manner will have carved for itself a place of honour in Nigerian history and in Africa.
Conclusion
51The essence of the secular state, as we have shown over these pages, is not necessarily that of denying religion a place in the hearts of its citizens, but, recognising its incompetence in spiritual affairs, it does not feel politically responsible for the salvation of the souls of its citizens. The function of a state in religious affairs is simply that of making the environment conducive, especially in pluralistic societies, for its citizens to hold their personal ideas, opinions and beliefs, and practice the same without molestation or harassment. The state of affairs in the Nigerian political scenery as of now is one where no clear cut policies exist to guarantee the liberty of choice and practice in a truly secular state structure.
52This discussion has rested on the level of ideas except wherever a particular historical development was deemed necessary to illustrate certain ideas. The church/state debate in France, given its long and turbulent history, is moving more into the realm of ideas than into actual physical engagement as the tendency still is in Nigeria.
Notes de bas de page
1 Usually Catholicism, sometimes Greek or Eastern Orthodox, or even Anglicanism, or Lutheranism.
2 The traditional Marxist qualifying slogan for religion.
3 Sur la Révolution Française. Ecrits de Marx el Engels. Anthologie publiée sous la Responsabilité de Claude Mainfriy (1985). Paris. Mesodor. Editions speciales. pp.48-49.
4 Abram (1967) "Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion" cited In Akolda M. Tiers "Freedom of Religion Under The Sudan Constitution And Laws" Journal Of African Law 26 (2) Autumn 1982.p. 135.
5 "La Tragédie des siècles" French translation of "The Great Controversy" (1986) Editions Vie et Santé. P 319.
6 Ibid P. 319-320.
7 Krishnaowami. The Study Of Discrimination In The Matters Of Religions, Rights and Practices. UN DOC E/CN.4 Sub. 2/200 Rev.1 Article 55 No. 346.
8 “Resistance et Sousmission" Genève Lbor et Fides, (1973).
9 See Jean Banbérot, (1985) Le Retour Des Huguenots. Paris. Editions Carf/Labor Fides. pp 301-302.
10 Jean Banberot, "L’Observatoire Protestant" Esprit 4-5 (Avril-Mai) 1986.
11 Le Financement des Eglises. Le Système des Cultes Reconnus, 1801-1983. Cerdic, Strasbourg (1984), p. 96. By a 1975 population count, there were 4,300 workers in this group and a 1983 estimate counted 1826 catholic priests, 238 recognised protestant pastors and 21 Jewish Rabbis. F. Messner.
12 Temps de l’Islam, Temps Industriel. ESPRIT (102) (1985).
13 Christian Mare, "Les sectes el les pouvoirs publics" In Regards sur l’actualité (avril) 1985 deals with the problem in detail.
14 Source: Doi, Abdulrrahman I., (1984) Islam In Nigeria p. 8.
15 Doi, Abdulrrahman (1984) Islam In Nigeria. Gaskiya Corporation Ltd., Zaria. p. 1.
16 Yusufu Bala Usman (1987) "The manipulation of Religion In Nigeria 1977- 1987" Kaduna, Vanguard Printers.p 31.
Auteur
A specialist in religion and politics, he studied at the University of Bordeaux and is now a pastor and lecturer at the Adventist Seminary of West Africa, Ilishan-Remo.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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