Much as Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State tries to explain the rationale behind the bill to check the activities of preachers, it would appear the controversy generated by it will continue to linger for a longtime to come. For, there are grey areas in that executive bill that raise suspicion on the capacity of its implementers when passed into law, to be fair to all the religions.
Titled “A bill for a law to substitute the Kaduna state Religious Preaching law 1984”, it seeks among others, the establishment of two committees, one from the Jama’atu Nasir Islam (JNI) for Moslems and the other from the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for Christians. It also proposes the setting up of an inter-faith ministerial committee to exercise supervisory control over the JNI and CAN committee.
Both the JNI and CAN committees are to issue licences to preachers as approved by the inter-faith ministerial committee and renewable after one year. Other key aspects of the bill relate to restricting the playing of cassettes, CDs, flash drive or any other communication gadgets containing religious recordings from accredited preachers to one’s house, inside the church, Mosque, or any other designated place of worship.
It also makes it an offence for any person to preach without licence, play a religious cassette or use a louder speaker for religious purposes after 8pm in public places. An offender shall on conviction be liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine of N200, 000 or both.
The Catholic Bishop of Kaduna, Most Rev. Dr. Matthew Man-OSO Ndagoso, is of the opinion that the bill is unnecessary as our laws can handle issues it seeks to tackle.
For the chairman of the JNI in the state, Alhaji Ja’faru Makafi, the bill is nothing new as preaching activities have had a long history of regulation in the state. He said it was for this reason that the regime of Ahmed Makafi had to drop similar idea when he was reminded that there were existing laws regulating preaching.
Thus, the bill appears an avoidable duplication of existing laws guiding the practice of religion and therefore patently unnecessary. Apart from this, there are aspects of it that are largely vague and suspicions are that in their implementation, the Kaduna State government may likely come out in its true colours.
The first has to do with the setting up of the two committees for JNI and CAN that are to be supervised by an inter-faith ministerial committee. The bill should have gone further to specify the composition of the inter-faith committee. This is especially so because given the very sensitive nature of religion on these shores, there is every reason to expect some friction when it comes to the composition and chairmanship of the committee. The direction it tilts will be a mirror to what may follow thereafter.
There will be friction over the propriety of the inter-faith committee to determine which preachers to issue licences and which of them should not be accredited to propagate their faith. Such issues are very hard to regulate. Moreover, the criteria for the issuance of such licences have not been spelt out. Is it going to be based on large followership, popularity, record or rigorous religious training? Or is it going to be biased in favour of well established faith organizations? What future is there for the budding ones?
And where is it written that these criteria are all there is for purposeful and effective evangelical work? It would seem the inter-faith committee is ab initio handicapped in the assignment the bill seeks to carve out for it. It will also amount to serious intrusion into the activities of the two religions by the government. There must be a point beyond which the government cannot intrude in religious affairs. Setting up an inter-faith committee to regulate what Christians and Moslems do would amount to an action taken too far.
There are also serious issues with the proposed trial of preachers without licences in the sharia and customary courts. The controversy that will arise from this may make nonsense of anything to be achieved by that piece of legislation.
If at all, preaching should be regulated in the manner being proposed in the bill, it ought to be left for the two religious bodies. But it is not all religious sects that belong to CAN and JNI. And that further constrains the attempt to regulate. You can neither regulate nor issue licences to faith based organizations that fall outside the ambit of these two religious bodies.
But then, there is the more fundamental flaw in the reasoning that the cause of religion is better served when preachers are armed with a licence from the government. Its corollary is that issuing licences to preachers constitutes both the necessary and sufficient conditions for peaceful co-existence among members of the two dominant religious groups. There are no facts to support this thinking.
Moreover, some of the preachers who command large following today and have performed well in their missionary work are neither known to have undergone formal training in their missionary work nor certified by such bodies as JNI or CAN before they commenced preaching. So the contention by El -Rufai that the bill “seeks to ensure that those that preach religion are qualified, trained and certified by their peers to do so” cannot be stretched too far.
In fact, if such regulation had been in force, many of the religious denominations that abound today would not have been allowed to spring up. That is the simple fact and that is why the feeling is strong that the bill is meant to limit religious freedom.
There are also issues with limiting the playing of cassettes, CDs and flash drive to one’s homes and inside the churches and mosques. The inevitable impression is that much of the religious disharmonies we have had in that state derive in the main, from unrestrained spreading of religious messages through these medium. This cannot be supported by the genesis of the various religion-induced riots that had in the past, led to the destruction of lives and property of inestimable value not only in that state but other states in the north. It cannot also be achieved by making it an offence for any person to preach without licence or limiting the use of loud speakers for religious purposes in public places after 8pm.
Such regulation will no doubt, come into conflict with the mode of evangelization of most Christian dominations. The issue is not as much with the playing of religious cassettes or spreading religious messages after a certain period of time. It has not got much to do with what preachers do during their public outings.
We need to look beyond these if we really seek the right handle to the cycle of religious violence that has been the sad lot of some states in the north. The Maitatsine riots of the 80’s; the series of religious violence of the past and the Boko Haram insurgency have little to do with some of the issues the bill seeks to regulate. Neither is the bill designed to check the future emergence of weird fundamentalist ideology nor the selfish manipulation of the down-trodden by the elite that give rise to such riots. Such indoctrination is implanted within the four walls of these religious bodies rather than outside of it.
El-Rufai should drop that superfluous piece of legislation and channel his energy to improving the material conditions of the people of that state. With improved education and material conditions of living, the ease with which politicians manipulate the masses for self-serving ends in the guise of religion, will wane very considerably. And that is the real issue.
NATION
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