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	Between Law and Responsibility Daily Independent July 2, 2010 http://www.independentngonline.com/DailyIndependent/Article.aspx?id=16322 Nobel Laureate Wole SOYINKA alerts the nation once more on the dangers of elevating individual religious doctrines above the protocol that binds the multi-religious Nigeria together… •Continued from yesterday The entire world knows today of the history of horrendous abuse of that same social investment – youth - by Roman Catholic priests across the world – from Germany, where the present Pope was born, to the United States and undoubtedly even across continents where new revelations may be imminent even as we speak. These revered and trusted ministers of God, charged with the spiritual upliftment of impressionable youth, abused the trust of their wards, choirboys or school pupils, inflicting on their victims unspeakable trauma. Bishoprics have been sued for millions, some diocese forced into bankruptcy and the Bank of the Vatican placed under severe strain through payouts for the degradation of what we have described as society's prime asset. Some of these clerics have been charged to court for crimes committed decades ago. The Pope has issued public apologies, personally, the Vatican has issued encyclicals rebuking its ministers for bringing the Church into disrepute, keeping this long rot hidden, often acting in a complaisant manner that encouraged the spread of the contagion. World media, needless to say, has been even more unsparing. By contrast, from the Supreme Council for Sharia, we encounter defiant conduct in favour of the unacceptable. Another instructive observation: Nowhere, absolutely nowhere has it been reported that even one of these criminals sought to justify his act through any institutional shield. They accepted full responsibility and expressed contrition. Not one has been heard to say that he was perfectly entitled to sodomize young boys because there is no law set down in the gospels, no chapter and verse in the Christian bible that expressly forbade the buggering of young boys. Nowhere has any accused priest attempted to interpret Christ's 'Suffer little children to come unto me' as an invitation to bring their children for his sexual gratification, turning unripe bodies, male or female, into submissive sex objects. Not one of these sick individuals within the Roman Catholic Church has shot back at his accusers and declared: The law of the Bible is superior to any constitution – I am ruled only by biblical dictates, not by secular law – show me where the Bible expressly forbids copulation with under-age children. Now that is where even the most grievously lapsed individual, however placed, may yet earn a modicum of redemption and mercy through acceptance of responsibility. Even as we speak here, the Los Angeles Justice department is considering bringing legal action against the soon-to-retire Archbishop Mahoney of the California diocese. He has not been accused of the basic criminality, but evidence has emerged that he engaged in some cover-up, thereby becoming potentially guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. He has denied this. He has not pleaded that it is Church policy to simply send offenders for counseling, or taken refuge in that Christian dictum: let him that is without sin cast the first stone. No, he is consulting his lawyers and issuing denials. I don't know what position Yerima holds in the Sharia hierarchy, but it can be no higher than that of Cardinal Mahoney within the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The issue is a simple one. If, within a multi-religious society, that is, a non-theocratic society, one religious text claims superiority to the constitution that supposedly serves as the common protocols of association, then let feel free to declare the same and act the same. I stand here to proclaim that The Book of Ifa stands superior to the Nigerian constitution, subject only to the interpretations that its acknowledged priests, the Babalawo, choose to give its tenets. For all followers of orisa, the Law of Ifa stands sacrosanct and supreme. However, the Law recognizes the relevance of a man's background and prior record, so we do have a duty to refer to a significant chapter in the career of this present law-giver and former executor of the nation's laws. I refer to the killing fatwa issued against a young woman, a journalist. True, Ahmed Yerima did not initiate the original fatwa - to his deputy belongs that singular dishonor, his superior being away from the country at the time. No sooner did the latter hear of it however than he backed and reinforced it with the full weight of his authority as governor and unconsecrated mullah. Obviously even a learned one, since he is not without knowledge of precedents as he seeks to impress upon us, poor ignoramuses: "I am merely following in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed" he declared. We shall return to that theme in a moment. Madame Uwais, writing from 'within', and obviously well versed in the tenets and injunctions of Islam and the Quo'ran and a Justice in her own right under whatever system, has frontally tackled what we, on our part, have always deplored as the abuse of a fundamentally humane religion, and the backward interpretations given it by some of its exponents and practitioners. She writes: "Shari'a is …. a dynamic law, measuring and moderating its impact on the development of the human condition." The acknowledged dynamism of Islam and the Shari'a serves as a social touchstone, a non revolutionary control that enables us to confront those who advertise Islam – or indeed any religion - as a rigid, inflexible Law-unto-itself, since it throws its practitioners back to the court of social and moral responsibility that makes human interaction possible. That evolved code of social responsibility may, but need not, also form the concern of religion, since it emerges primarily from deductions of one's obligations to fellow creatures and environment. Before religion, community was. We can date religions, but social scientists are still grappling with the time-line of the evolution of social man. Again, a code of responsibilities may also coincide with the law directly, or operate outside it – that is, operate where the Law is silent. "All the things that Allah said we should do, and all the things that the Prophet said we should do, I have tried to do them" All the things? We need some emergency schooling. We would like to be instructed where the Koran or the Prophet mandates Yerima to break the laws of Egypt – a Muslim nation – or of Nigeria, a multi-religious society, both members of the Africa Union. We demand to be schooled as to what portions of the Quo'ran fly in the face of the realities of a 13 or 14 year old girl child's anatomy, permitting her to be snatched from her place as a protected asset and turned into a sex facility – there is no other expression for it – for a 50-year old pervert. For all reflective cohabitants of the Nigerian nation space, ex-governor, sitting Senator Yerima's impudent self-defence, applauded by a number of his fellow senators and the Supreme Council for Sharia, transcends the act itself. Once again, this time on a scale that overtakes even his insertion of a divisive wedge within the Nigerian polity through his sectarian imposition of the Shari'a - which, as has become evident – is Ahmed Yerima's personal, cultic, and convenient version – looms the very definition of nation being. There hangs a truly mind-boggling bundle of contradictions that must be boldly disentangled in the process of nation-becoming. For far too many years, these contradictions have been swept under the carpet through cynical and opportunistic political calculations, despicable compromises and, most disturbingly, sheer moral cowardice. From time to time however, an opportunity comes to compel the people of any nation space to confront the obstacles in the way of an honest interrogation of a vision of oneness. Such moments should be welcome. Such moments should be seized upon, indeed explored and exploited because there is nothing immutable about a nation's existence, and not even a collective will-to-existence makes it so. History flatly contradicts such expectations, teaches that it is only work, real hard work and social negotiations within a framework of practicable, basic common denominators that can lay the basis for a single nation. Acting against that obvious negotiation of interests, however defined, and in whatever field of interactive undertaking, is the habit of loose, and therefore porous compromises, the privileging of one group claims over another, and a lack of moral rigour in the adoption, and honest application of basic rules of co-existence throughout every component hamlet within the desired polity. This principle in no way vitiates the organization – even collective - organization of differences, of group interests, undertaken on a principle of mutual assistance and collaboration with others. The recent national affront – a mere high-profile exposure of a number of deeply entrenched decadent traditions in parts of the nation – has brought to the fore the fragile nature of the protocols that supposedly bind the nation space known as Nigeria together. Unilateral tinkering with, indeed arrogant flouting of, these protocols time and time again, by those who mouth their commitment to a unified entity, is such evident contradiction that one can only wonder why they do not boldly announce their own comprehensive set of protocols, present them to the rest of the nation as a basis for discussion and negotiation. What we witness today is that such people thrive through having their cake and eating it. They benefit, indeed prosper, under the set of protocols but proceed to deface those pages that they find inconvenient, substituting their own preferences by a casual act of declaration – or plain sight deed. The binding protocols, including criminal laws, become relative – we have grown accustomed, even complaisant, about this. It has become so commonplace that it draws little attention to itself. However, we enter increasingly dangerous grounds when the habit becomes openly declared as the ground rule, and with a self-ascribed religion based hierarchy in a society of multiple religions. This is intolerable proceeding. When we are dragged into a realm of relativism, where, paradoxically, relativism arrogates to itself a bedrock stature that upholds any act that may affect, or deny the equally 'relative' claims of others within the same society, then everything falls to pieces, the entire social fabric is ripped apart. At such a point, we find ourselves confronted with only one choice - to return to base, throw these protocols into a basket, shake them up, and then tackle what is left that we can thereafter refer to as the irreducible commonalities that enable us to see ourselves as one nation. This phase has been recorded several times over, the line has been crossed again and again but, rather than confront the moment of truth structurally and re-group as free beings, we only hear the sing-song –'the sovereignty of the nation is non-negotiable'. Permit me to enter a dissenting view: not just the sovereignty, but the very concept of the nation is, and must be negotiated. All else is falsity, complacency, self-deception, a bequest to future generations of gilded skyscrapers erected on quicksands. Try as I can, I do not recall any individual precedent that offers itself as an opportunity for some serious soul-searching, reaching backwards into the beginnings of the ongoing consolidation of the Nigerian nation space, even at its rawest, external administrative phase. The human cost has reached unacceptable dimensions, and it is within that context of the cycle of waste of human assets that I invite us to take our minds some years back, and make a comparison of the following two utterances, and the consequences for the nation, that have attended both. The first was by the briefly mentioned female journalist from THISDAY, the year 2002. The circumstance: preparations for a Beauty Queen parade and exhibition in a city that was expressly situated as a symbol of unity, and guarantee of the mutual co-habitation of varied peoples and cultures – Abuja. Some Yerimites – let's call them that, as distinct from genuine believers - objected to this pageant as an act of impiety and indecency, threatened fire and brimstone if it was held, never mind that there were contestants who were also fielded by their own Islamic nations – but that is totally irrelevant, just a useful passing observation.
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