Visiting Ireland to deliver this year’s Sakharov Lecture, Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist Hauwa Ibrahim speaks exclusively to Metro Éireann about her work in defence of those victimised under Sharia law, and her support of girls’ education
Hauwa Ibrahim is Nigeria’s most influential female lawyer, and winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2005.
She came to global attention following the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in Zamfara State, the north of Nigeria, in 1999 by then governor Ahmad Rufai Sani.
In the 14 years since, Ibrahim – an out-going fellow at Harvard Divinity School – has represented many people condemned under Sharia, which is practiced in 12 of Nigeria’s northern states. Among those she has defended are Amina Lawal, Safiya Hussaini and Hafsatu Abubákar.
During her time at Harvard, Ibrahim published her first book, Practicing Sharia Law: Seven Strategies for Achieving Justice in Sharia Courts, which gives unique insights into the complexities of the Islamic legal system.
Recently Ibrahim, a mother of two, came to the European Parliament’s office in Ireland to deliver the Sakharov Lecture as part of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded every year by the European Parliament.
Established in 1988, the award is presented to individuals or organisations in recognition of their work in support of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Other engagements during her four-day visit to Ireland included a seminar with students and staff at University College Dublin (UCD), an informal meeting with members of the Irish Parliament’s Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, and a roundtable debate with civil society groups and discussions with members of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and women of Clonskeagh Mosque.
Sharia as presently practiced in northern Nigeria came about when Governor Sani “campaigned on the platform that ‘If you elect me, I’ll give you Sharia,” says Ibrahim. “So it was a campaign promise delivered.”
What the governor did next was to take the principles of Sharia – which is based on civil matters, including adultery – and adapt them to the criminal code.
Ibrahim said the major criminal offences he introduced include drinking alcohol (with a punishment of 100 floggings), and adultery and ‘fornication’, which he lumped together, and carry the punishment of flogging if unmarried, and stoning to death if having even the appearance of marriage.
She continued: “If you steal, you have your limbs amputated. If you commit apostasy you will be stoned, and if you commit hirabah (piracy) or robbery and somebody dies, you will be crucified. So that is basically what he introduced into what used to be a civil matter.”
These changes are contrary to the Nigerian Constitution, Section 277 of which clearly outlines the reach of Sharia courts. “The section says something like, “they’re only allowed to have jurisdiction over civil matters,” says Ibrahim. “And the civil matters were spelled out: marriages, divorce, children, gifts. Just spelled out, clearly. There was no ambiguity on that Section 277 of the 1999 constitution. No ambiguity.”
She said the same constitution also states, in section 1, that “any law, any law to the extent of it existence, if it comes into conflict with the Nigerian constitution, that law shall be null and void. And then Section 10 says there shall be no state religion! So you could see this combination [contradicts itself].”
Yet despite the Constitutional guarantee, many people – especially women and children – have fallen afoul of Sharia law. Men and women accused of adultery and sentenced to death, as well as children condemned to have limbs cut off, have had their cases either quashed or postponed due to the work Ibrahim and her legal firm has done.
“I’ve been involved [in so many cases],” says Ibrahim, “my last count was 157. You know I do them all pro bono; I don’t take a dime to do my cases. I do them because I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Her opposition to the criminal adaptations of Sharia law, however, does not mean she is against the system in principle. “I think Sharia is a good law, an excellent law,” she says. “But the way it’s interpreted needs to be checked.
“You interpret it within the context of its bedrock, and the bedrock of Sharia is justice and fairness. If you follow the letter of Sharia law, all the things that are happening are only somebody’s imagination.”
Asked about her motivation for handling her cases, she says: “I’m also just giving back what I have been given, which is the opportunity to be educated. It has been a fascinating journey... I became educated by accident, I became a lawyer by accident, and coming into the Sharia cases was an accident. And for me the journey is just about to begin.”
Ibrahim’s is certainly a unique story, of a woman from Hinnah, a rural vullage in Gombe State, who says she was given out for marriage at the age of 10 but did everything in her power to resist – and later earned a teaching certificate and a university degree in law, overcoming language barriers along the way.
“English was not a language I had learned at all,” she says. “I picked it up listening to people speak over the years.” Ibrahim admits she still describes English as her ‘fifth language’.
Today, looking over the situation for girls born into her local community in Nigeria’s northeast, has anything changed? Ibrahim says it’s a mixed bag.
“I want to tell you that things have changed positively, but some other things are also taking a turn [for the worse]. 15 years after I became a lawyer, in my own village – in my own district – we had another girl that became a lawyer. So for me that is positive [although] it took so long.”
Turning to the subject of education for girls, Ibrahim says she has a sophisticated strategy to involve religious leaders – invariably powerful men – in campaigns aimed at encouraging parents to enrol their daughters in school.
“The men are buying into it – they bought into it because they think… I think they believe in it too, they are buying into allowing the woman to have some formal education.”
She says she expects a better life for girls with the current strategy she has adopted.
“In my society, the men will have to be involved, the women will have to be involved, the mothers have to be involved, the aunties. It takes us as a society, a village, to bring up a child. So it’s not your child, it’s our child. So if we take it that way, whatever it takes to make the child succeed, we will do it. And that is the way.”
