Meet Aliyu Bappa Misau, House of Reps Member Who Sponsored Bill to Islamise Nigeria
The proposed law sponsored by Aliyu Bappa Misau, a PDP lawmaker from Bauchi is targeted to expand the application of Islamic Law from personal matters to other civil issues including contract, company and international disputes.
He said Nigeria had witnessed major developments to warrant the amendments of the description to warrant the inclusion of other civil areas of the Muslim laws.
The lawmaker said: “The 1999 Consitution provides for Personal Islamic law. The Constitution did not envisage the dynamism and development coming into the country.
The constitution did not recognise Islamic Personal Law, Islamic Company Law. Islamic International Law and Islamic Public Law. In 2003, Jaiz Bank came up under commercial Islamic law, and in 2019, another bank, Tajbank.
“If you look at personal law, it only encompasses marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Therefore, what we are requiring is the removal of personnel in sections 24, 262, 277 and section 288, so that other relevant laws like Islamic commercial laws, Islamic company laws, and Islamic international law can have a place in the constitution.”
According to the 1999 constitution, Nigeria is a secular state with an almost even distribution of the population between the two main religions; Christianity and Islam. An application of the proposed bill will ultimately tilt the country towards Islam, having already established that 12 states which represents a third of the country practice the sharia law.
This bill generated a lot of arguments during the plenary session on Thursday and has been heavily criticized by Nigerians on social media.
