LAGOS, Sept 17 (AFP) - Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday
defended the right of states in the north of his country to impose Islamic
law, but predicted that a single mother sentenced to death for bearing a
child out of wedlock would be cleared.
Obasanjo, who is himself a Christian from the south, said that under
Nigeria's federal system of government the 12 mainly Muslim northern states
had every right to reintroduce the Sharia code into their penal law.
"We have Sharia law in our constitution. Sharia has always been part of
our life in Nigeria," he said in an interview with satellite broadcaster
CNN.
"We have a federal form of government where state governments are able
to make their own laws, that's why they have their own executive, their own
legislators and they even have their own judiciary."
Last month a Nigerian Sharia appeal court in the northern state of
Katsina upheld the conviction of Amina Lawal, 30, who had been sentenced
under Islamic law to be stoned to death.
Her legal team of women's rights lawyers have appealed the verdict, but
Lawal's supporters also want Nigeria's federal government to declare that
the use of Sharia law in criminal cases is unconstitutional.
Obasanjo's justice minister, Kanu Agabi, told AFP last month that the
government does oppose the use of Sharia in criminal cases but said that it
could not intervene directly.
Instead, the federal government is hoping that a Sharia case will
eventually be appealed to Nigeria's supreme court, which could pronounce on
the legality of the code's use.
"I do hope that sooner or later these cases will get to the supreme
court, and maybe the supreme court will be able to make a definite
pronouncement," Obasanjo said Tuesday, predicting that Lawal would
eventually be cleared.
"It's one thing to say that a particular judgement has been given, it's
another to say that a particular judgement has been carried out," he said.
"For all I know nobody has been stoned to death in Nigeria. ... I
believe that if all the provisions of our constitution and our law are
followed, maybe nobody will ever be stoned to death," he said.
"I know what people feel -- and I know how I feel -- that these
judgements are ever given at all, but that is the situation of the federal
constitution that we have in our country," he said.
The president's comments will be a disappointment both for Lawal's
sympathisers and for the organisers of the 2002 Miss World beauty pageant,
due to be held in Abuja on November 30.
Many beauty queens from around the world have threatened to boycott the
event if Lawal is still facing the death penalty.
Organisers have sought assurances that she will not be harmed, but if
the government remains determined to allow the Sharia legal system to run
its course the young mother will at best still be locked into the appeals
process when the ceremony opens.
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