It is deplorable that the only time Africa hits the news is during famine, crisis etc. There is much more to Africa than western brush-fire journalism presents. The latest is the religious crisis in Nigeria. Doomsayers are saying that Nigeria will collapse, that is it is the end of the country. But how come despite the political crisis in Britain the IRA, the crisis of devolution in Scotland, no one is predicting the end of Britain?

The speakers today will present the political and religious crisis in Nigeria in clearer perspective. We hope to get some pointers to the future of democracy in Nigeria, and indeed the wider implications of the on-going religious and ethnic crisis in the country for democracy and development in the sub-region.

I was in Kaduna (northern Nigeria) on 20`h February when this crisis was unfolding. By sheer coincidence - and this had to do with prior travel arrangements, I was also in Kano, Aba and Port Harcourt when the riots broke out in those areas of the country. How do we respond to the crisis? What segment of the social groups in Nigeria, Muslim and non-Muslims alike, are willing to take a stand, departing from the dominant view point that seemed to have taken over the media?

One, the ethnic-religious construction of the problem had made it impossible for people to come out and take a clear and enlightened stand on the Sharia debate. If you were from the north, you supported sharia. If you were in the south, you opposed it, and used it as a crutch to attack the Hausa-Fulani. This, to my mind, is the crux of the problem. In reality, the Nigerian media has been very mischievous in this respect, and this has put ordinary moslems in a quandary.

Secondly, within the context of the women's movement who have been in the forefront of the opposition to Sharia, especially WIN in Kaduna and also Baobab, they certainly understand the implications of Sharia much more profoundly than the human rights groups. From their point of view, the undefined rules that are imposed on people is much more dangerous, far more pernicious. For example, the Zamfara State government will not explicitly state that it will discriminate against women. But when you have Sharia in place, you then create conditions for overt discrimination against women. The informal rules and regulations that go with Sharia are far more dangerous.

The third point is that we underestimate the pro-Sharia forces, especially the way in which they have clearly influenced public opinion, using all sorts of devious strategies to sway the ordinary people, including drafting a bill and deliberately praying in the House of Assembly premises in Kano to force assemblymen, the majority of whom were muslims, to take a stand. There is also the political dimension. The majority of these fellows pushing the Sharia agenda worked closely with General Abacha and have been discredited. They now push Sharia as a cynical way of becoming politically relevant again.

Finally, the pro-Sharia movement is arguing that Nigeria is a federation and guarantees the right to practice one's own religion, but how does a constitution deal with difference- in way of life, religion etc? There is a wider political question here. How do you handle difference in a liberal democracy? How do you relate with, say, the Igbo, in pre-dominantly Muslim northern Nigeria? I think this is a very important philosophical debate we should be addressing now.

The fundamental issue about the Sharia is that it lies at the heart of identity politics in Nigeria. This is one issue people have not come to grips with in Nigerian political life for a long time. This is the very first time people have taken a position on an issue which previously would have been clothed in other intervening variables. Why is this so? My argument is that many of the contradictions of the past have been sharpened to such an extent that the bare bones are now visible. You are in power in the State House, and the people are looking up to you to deliver on basic social necessities. You then resort to cynical strategies like the Sharia to buy legitimacy.

These issues are, in turn, bound up with such questions as what manner of federation do Nigerians want? In Nigeria, government has always decreed that Sharia should not be debated. Nigerians, thus, have not had any opportunity to debate fundamental issues of religion. Thus, people now, finding themselves in a new democratic dispensation, are forcing the issue. The Sharia also raises the issue of citizen rights. Who is a citizen in Nigeria? And what does citizenship entail?

The argument of Sharia, the way it is posed, is bound to run into a cul-de-sac.

What is going on is pure politics. It is a convenient attempt by a group of people to empower themselves. It is a question of empowerment and dis-empowerment. The balance of power in Kaduna was so tight that the political framework ruptured. We should bear in mind Obasanjo's statement, that what happened in Kaduna was the worst carnage since the civil war.

The way to get out of this religious crisis, that is if it is really a religious crisis in the first place, is to seek a just solution. For it to be just, it has to be a democratic decision, democratically debated, and democratically implemented.

We need to go beyond the immediate issues of Sharia. When does the relationship between politics and religion become violent? I had warned in October 1999 that with the sharia issue Nigerians were toying with disaster. It was obvious that if the government did not move quickly to arrest the situation and clarify its position on the legality or otherwise of the `Zamfara Declaration' something would give.

Viewed historically, the seeds of the Kaduna debacle were sown following the politicisation of religion by cynical dictators like General Ibrahim Babangida who attempted to take Nigeria into the OIC in 1986. This then snowballed into a struggle for political supremacy by the two major religions in what is otherwise a secular state. The politicisation of religion in Iran and Iraq has wreaked untold havoc on those two countries. In Northern Ireland, the Catholics and Protestants struggled for political liberation together until some politicians began to use religion to divide the two groups. Thus, religion, when inserted into the political arena, tends to have gruesome consequences.

The problems raised by the Sharia in Nigeria go beyond religion; we should, therefore, take bold steps to tackle the underlying problems which issues like Sharia feed on. We should be thinking of welfare programmes for the youth, as is the case in Europe. As long as you have the unemployed, the hungry and the desperate, Sharia would always be exploited by the manipulators of our differences secure in the knowledge that there would be foot soldiers to take their war to the street.

Sharia has always been recognised in Nigeria, on the same footing as customary law in the south of the country. This is the right and proper thing, ensuring that the secularity of the country is respected. This is the way Nigeria should be going, separating the state from the mosque or church. Individuals should be free to follow their own gods, worship in their own mosques or churches, while the country as a body should be allowed to pursue important policies that impinge on social and economic and political wellbeing of the citizenry unrestrained by religious bigotry in whatever hue.

Let me begin by clarifying a point raised by my friend and fellow-speaker, Dr Biko. There are no taxpayers in Nigeria. Why is it there are not many Nigerians who are willing to die for their country? We began to dance on the grave of General Abacha (the late dictator) not knowing that the grave was still wet. We do not have democracy in Nigeria but a transition manned by civilians. And civilians can be dictatorial. We must proceed by agreeing that it was God that guided this transition, got Abacha out of the way. It is, therefore, not strange, that we had this religious rupture.

What is happening is really a context of power; who lost power, who won power, and who wants power back. What happened in Kaduna was not new; it had happened before. I want to contest Obasanjo's claim that the Kaduna crisis was the most horrendous since the war. The processes that threw up Obasanjo were intimately bound up with the political crisis that has gripped the northern political class. Obasanjo whom they had supported refused to play their game, and let himself to be appropriated by the south-west politicians, so they claim. Obasanjo as a politician does not have a political base- not in the army, nor in his ethnic group, nor anywhere else. And so Sharia was dusted up to challenge him, to intimidate him, to force him to back down and play things their way.

A power vacuum exits in northern Nigeria, and indeed at the national level. This is where the Sharia issue comes in. We must also bear in mind that the persons in the National Assembly largely have an unfinished agenda, personal and financial. So we have to modify our expectations of this group as a power base. We must also see the advent of pentecostal Christianity as a powerful social and political force in Nigeria. Christians have now appropriated Obasanjo's government as God's government. The problem is that these pentecostal strain is fundamentalist, and viscerally opposed to Islam, unlike the Catholic Church which is more liberal and embracing. This has created tension in the muslim community in Nigeria. Many Christians have become more confident and outspoken, and the muslims feel uncomfortable about this.

There is also the fact that some have invested emotionally in the sharia- the judges who are well paid, and an entire spectrum of people who have been elevated to social and economic relevance. We must also factor in the fact that a north which has always been in power is now fighting to get used to the new state of `powerlessness.' All the key posts in the Obasanjo administration are perceived as not from the `real' north. This is a crisis for power-brokers and beneficiaries of power in the north. People have to take this sea change in. And this is one of the ways in which the sharia issue should be perceived.

Kaduna exploded because something had to give politically in Nigeria. What does Kaduna mean to Nigerians, to Muslims, to the indigenes, to Christians? This is the crux of the crisis. The original inhabitants, the Gwari, have been hounded out. The city is volatile, a no man's land as it were. There is also an army of unemployed people in the city. So Kaduna was perfectly placed to ignite the fire. There is also a breakdown in traditional authority in the north. Young politicians are edging out the old, but they themselves are yet to consolidate their grip on power. Finally, there are actually no stakeholders in the present dispensation. Nigerians feel they are not better off now than when Obasanjo assumed office, which means that Obasanjo is standing on thin earth, having no support, and facing the real possibility of a restive populace moving against him. The call for a Sovereign National Conference is linked up with this deep dissatisfaction with the politics of the regime. What happened in Kaduna is part of this larger crisis. The north has to deal with the very important issue of change, of social and economic development, recognising that the vast majority of the populace in the north do not have the skills necessary to move them into the modern age, and moving quickly to provide them with skills and tools with which to be gainfully employed. The alternative is another conflagration that will make what happened in Kaduna seem like child's play.