CONSTITUTIONAL IMPEDIMENTS TO CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria's constitutional engineering has tended to refract as well as attract ethnoreligious contestations. Section 10 of the 1999 Nigerian constitution provides that: “The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.” The 'no state religion' clause holds that every Nigerian citizen “shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief.” However, the establishment of Islamic Sharia Criminal codes by 12 out of 36 Nigeria's states under the 1999 constitution, challenged the authority of the Nigerian state, its ability to protect universal human rights and maintain relative harmony among her federating units. This paper outlines the constitutional fault-lines of the Nigerian state and analyzes its capacity or otherwise to deal with the crisis of citizenship rights and religious freedom, including identity and inter-group contestations that frequently take violent forms.