Sharia in Nigeria

In Nigeria, Sharia has been instituted as a main body of civil and criminal law in twelve Muslim-majority states since 1999, when then-Zamfara State governor Ahmad Sani Yerima^[1] began the push for the institution of Sharia at the state level of government. A "declaration of full Sharia law" was made in the twelve states in that year, and the states created Islamic legal institutions such as a Sharia Commission, and Zakat Commission, and a hisbah, i.e. "a group expected to promote Islamic virtue, whilst discouraging vice".^[2] According to some critics (Leo Igwe, chair of the board of trustees for the Humanist Association of Nigeria), the adoption of Sharia law violates Article 10 of the Nigerian constitution guaranteeing religious freedom.^[3]