Authored By: Joseph Onuh OGUCHE
University of Benin, Benin City
Introduction
On the 9th of August 2026, a Muslim cleric, Sheikh Jingir, at an event in Kano State, publicly asserted that Nigeria is a Muslim country. Coming from a religious figure of considerable public standing, such an assertion does not lend itself to casual dismissal, for it carries the latent capacity to metamorphose into a normative claim upon the state, its institutions, and its officials. It is against this backdrop that the present study investigates the constitutional secularism of the Nigerian state against the ‘Muslim country’ assertion, an inquiry which, properly pursued, renders that assertion futile when measured against the intention of the legislative draftsmen as embodied in section 10 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), and against Nigeria’s other international legal obligations. The research question is accordingly a narrow but consequential one: is the ‘Muslim country’ assertion constitutionally and jurisprudentially tenable within the Nigerian legal order? This work submits that it is not. The discussion proceeds by clarifying the concept of secularism, examining the constitutional text and the judicial authorities, testing the assertion against jurisprudential theory, and assessing it against Nigeria’s international obligations.
It bears stating, for the avoidance of doubt, that this is not a theological inquiry into the truth of any religious doctrine, but a legal inquiry into the constitutional status of the state. A legal system asked to adjudicate the veracity of religious belief oversteps its competence; one asked whether the state may be captured by a particular religious identity is doing precisely what constitutional law exists to do.
The secularity of Nigeria is not expressly stated anywhere in section 10 of the Constitution.1 This textual silence has, on occasion, invited judicial equivocation. In Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government,2 the Court of Appeal made what may fairly be described as an unsatisfactory attempt to characterise Nigeria’s constitutional posture towards religion, with Gumel J.C.A. observing: “Nigerians are deeply religious and the faithful across the religious divide do not fail to assert their religious identities at the slightest opportunity. Some do it out of regular religious convictions, but some are fanatical, fundamentalists or merely bigoted… in other words, we are a multi-cultural and multi-religious society.”
Although the empirical accuracy of that observation is difficult to dispute as sociology, it amounts to a legal fallacy to whittle down the secularism of a state solely by reason of the multi-religiousness of its population, since that multi-religiousness is itself an indication of secularism rather than a derogation from it. A state does not become less secular because its citizens are religious; it becomes more urgently in need of secularism’s protective architecture precisely because they are religious, and religious in mutually irreducible ways.3 Demographic religiosity is a sociological datum, not a source of constitutional norms, and cannot ground a state religion in a text that expressly disclaims one. This anchors the thesis pursued throughout: the neutrality of the Nigerian state is not diminished by the religious fervour of its citizens, and cannot be conscripted by any cleric, however eminent, into a claim of confessional statehood.
Conceptual Clarification of Secularism versus Religious Population
Before the constitutional architecture of Nigerian secularism can be meaningfully interrogated, it is necessary, as a matter of sound legal method, to fix the conceptual referent of ‘secularism’ itself, for imprecision at the definitional stage tends to metastasise into confusion at the doctrinal stage.
According to the Longman Dictionary, secularism is defined as: “A system of social organization that does not allow religion to influence the government or the belief that religion should not influence a government”.4
J. S. Omotola posits further that: “Secularism is commonly regarded as ‘an ideology that holds that religious issues should not be the basis of Politics, or (in the extreme) that religion has no place in public life’. Essentially, secularism seeks to preserve the religious neutrality of government and cultures.”5
Conceptually, therefore, a secular state connotes the equal treatment of its citizens irrespective of religion; secularism is not hostility to religion but neutrality among religions, a principle of state abstention rather than state antagonism.6 It is often erroneously assumed that secularism entails the marginalisation of religious life; it entails only the state’s refusal to align its coercive apparatus, legislative agenda and public institutions with any single religious identity, so that no citizen’s standing before the law is enhanced or diminished by what he or she believes.
Notwithstanding Nigeria’s secularity, there are, as in other countries, large quantitative differences in the religious population across its constituent geopolitical zones. That demographic reality notwithstanding, the numerical dominance of a religious group in particular regions does not by that fact transform the secularism of the state into a religious state, as is settled in other constitutionally comparable jurisdictions such as India, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, where numerical religious dominance coexists with constitutional neutrality.7 Applied to Nigeria, this forecloses any argument that the numerical strength of Islam in parts of the North, or of Christianity in parts of the South, can by itself convert Nigeria into a religious state of either confession. The state’s legal character is a function of its constitutive instrument, not of its census returns.
Constitutional Architecture
Section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution provides: “The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.”8
It is deducible, from the marginal note and the substantive text, that section 10 reads as a “Prohibition of State Religion.” The provision is not aspirational; it is couched in the imperative mood, “shall not adopt”, denoting a mandatory prohibition rather than a discretionary guideline. It follows that the assertion that ‘Nigeria is a Muslim Country’ translates, in strict legal terms, into a constitutional confrontation, compounded when section 10 is read in pari materia with section 38, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to change one’s religion;9 a state asserted to be constitutionally Muslim sits in direct tension with a guarantee protecting the citizen’s freedom to abandon Islam, or any religion, altogether.
Furthermore, the statement, owing to the religious authority of its source, would most likely ripen into a breach of the freedom from discrimination on the ground of religion which section 42 guards.10 Such an assertion, uttered by a cleric of considerable standing, would readily be construed as a command from a religious superior to his inferiors, including those occupying positions of public authority, and would find expression, overt or subtle, in government policy. Where that occurs, the equal citizenship promised by section 42 is jeopardised, and adherents of other faiths, or of no faith, are rendered constructively second-class before organs of state constitutionally obliged to treat them as equals. It is submitted that the assertion amounts to a constitutional breach rendering it null and void, to the extent of its inconsistency, by operation of sections 1(1) and 1(3), the supremacy clause subordinating every other law, custom or claim, religious or otherwise, to the Constitution itself.11 The assertion is, quite simply, unconstitutional and void ab initio, however persuasive its rhetorical or theological force to its adherents.
The Judiciary’s Consistent Refusal to Privilege One Religion
The Nigerian judiciary has consistently resisted discrimination on the ground of religion, thereby upholding, through the accumulated weight of its jurisprudence, the secularism of the Nigerian state, notwithstanding the textual silence noted earlier. This posture is well illustrated in Adamu v Attorney General of Borno State,12 where the Court of Appeal held that requiring Christian parents to pay for religious instruction, while government-funded Islamic instruction for Muslim pupils, was actionable discrimination — authority that the state may not confer a fiscal advantage upon one religious community’s instructional needs while burdening another’s.
Similarly, in Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government,13 the Court of Appeal protected Muslim students’ right to wear the hijab in public schools, grounding this firmly in sections 38 and 42. In both cases the court protected the minority religious adherents before it, reinforcing the constitutionality of the “Prohibition of State Religion” despite large religious differences that might, on a purely majoritarian logic, have counselled a contrary outcome. In Adamu, the court vindicated a Christian minority against a Muslim-majority practice; in Abdulkareem, it vindicated a Muslim minority against a policy threatening a visible Islamic practice. That the judiciary ruled for whichever party stood as the aggrieved minority, irrespective of faith, evidences a judicial mind operating from a presumption of religious neutrality rather than confessional preference — the very even-handedness the ‘Muslim country’ assertion threatens to unsettle.
The 1986 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) membership controversy is useful evidence of this argument’s political history. Nigeria’s full OIC membership under the Babangida administration triggered a national crisis over the country’s secularity, and recent litigation by human rights lawyer Malcolm Omirhobo challenging the OIC membership under sections 1(1), 10 and 42 demonstrates that the ‘Muslim nation’ claim has been made, tested, and constitutionally contested before.14
Jurisprudential Analysis
Beyond the text and the case law, the assertion also fails when tested against the major theoretical foundations of constitutional government. Kelsen’s theory of the Grundnorm, or basic norm, holds that the validity of every legal norm in a state derives, through a hierarchy of norms, from a basic norm that grounds the constitution as the highest positive law. On this account, it is the constitution, not any religious assertion, that stands at the apex of the legal order of any state, Nigeria inclusive, and all other claims to legal validity, including religious claims to legitimacy, derive their validity from it and not the reverse. Applied here, since the 1999 Constitution provides no basis for the legitimacy of the assertion of a ‘Muslim Country’, the assertion is null and void, as it does not follow the hierarchical order of legal validity contemplated by the Grundnorm and contradicts the basic norm itself. In Kelsenian terms, the assertion attempts to smuggle a norm of religious identity into the apex of the legal hierarchy without any corresponding delegation of validating authority and must fail as a matter of pure legal theory, quite apart from its failure as positive constitutional text.
Similarly, adopting the arguments of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on social contract theory, state neutrality is the condition precedent for a plural society’s consent to be governed; a ‘Muslim country’ claim by one citizen or group unilaterally rewrites the terms of that contract without the consent of the other contracting parties. On a Lockean reading, political authority is legitimate only insofar as it rests upon the consent of the governed, and in a religiously plural society that consent can only be secured on terms of confessional neutrality; a unilateral religious re-characterisation of the state is an act of constitutional usurpation, altering the social contract by rhetorical fiat rather than the amendment procedure prescribed in section 9.15
Lastly, there is a jurisprudentially significant difference between legal positivism and theoretical or theological claims. Sections 10, 38 and 42 state “what the law is”, as against any theoretical claim of “what the law should be” — the Hartian and Austinian positivist distinction between law posited by a recognised law-making authority and law argued for by reference to extrinsic religious commitments. The cleric’s statement may reflect a sincerely held belief, but belief is not law. A legal system that permitted theological conviction, however widely shared, to override its posited constitutional text would collapse into a theocracy governed by shifting religious pronouncements — a possibility sections 1(1), 1(3) and 10 have deliberately foreclosed.
International and Comparative Law
The constitutional argument developed above does not stand in isolation; it is reinforced by Nigeria’s international human rights obligations, obligations forming part of the normative matrix against which the ‘Muslim country’ assertion must be assessed.
By the provision of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),16 to which Nigeria acceded in 1993, every person within the territory of a State Party is guaranteed freedom of thought, conscience and religion, extending to the freedom to adopt, retain, or change one’s religion, and to manifest it in worship, observance, practice and teaching. That provision notwithstanding, the Muslim cleric went ahead to claim that Nigeria is a “Muslim Country”.
This Article further lends support, at the international plane, to the domestic “Prohibition of State Religion”, which, as a matter of treaty obligation, must be respected, since a state that acquiesces in the confessional re-characterisation of its constitutional identity places itself at odds with the freedom of religion, including the negative freedom not to be governed as a subject of a particular faith, that Article 18 protects.
Also, Article 26 provides for the equality of all persons before the law,17 forestalling the preferential treatment that may result for adherents of one faith among government officials and in government policy, should such a statement take practical root. Thus, the assertion contradicts the obligations Nigeria has assumed under both Article 18 and Article 26 of the ICCPR, reinforcing, rather than merely duplicating, the domestic constitutional guarantees already canvassed.
Furthermore, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, while Articles 2, 3 and 8 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantee non-discrimination, equality before the law, and freedom of conscience and religion respectively.18 Nigeria has ratified and domesticated the African Charter as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, which forms part of Nigerian law directly enforceable before Nigerian courts. The cleric’s statement, if permitted to acquire normative traction, would derogate from these international standards, standards Nigeria, as a dualist state that has domesticated the African Charter, cannot lightly disregard without exposing itself to domestic judicial censure and international opprobrium.
It should be noted, by way of comparison, that states which are constitutionally Islamic declare that status explicitly; Iran’s Constitution names Islam as the official religion, while Saudi Arabia’s Basic Law is expressly Sharia-based. Nigeria’s Constitution does precisely the opposite, rendering the fallacious character of the ‘Muslim country’ assertion all the more visible: where a state intends to constitute itself along confessional lines, it says so in unambiguous language, as Iran and Saudi Arabia have done; Nigeria’s Constitution contains its precise antithesis in section 10.
Conclusion
Drawing the threads of this analysis together, the assertion that Nigeria is a Muslim country cannot survive scrutiny under the 1999 Constitution, Nigerian judicial precedent, the jurisprudential foundations of constitutional government, or Nigeria’s international human rights obligations. Section 10 prohibits the adoption of a state religion without exception; sections 38 and 42 guarantee freedom of religion and freedom from religious discrimination in terms incompatible with any state-endorsed confessional identity; sections 1(1) and 1(3) render any inconsistent claim void to the extent of its inconsistency; the judiciary, in Adamu v Attorney General of Borno State and Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government, has consistently protected whichever religious minority stood before it, evidencing neutrality rather than confessional preference; Kelsen, Locke and Rousseau confirm that the constitution, not a religious pronouncement, stands at the apex of the legal order from which all legal validity flows, and that state neutrality is the condition of the plural society’s consent to be governed; and the ICCPR, the UDHR, and the African Charter reinforce, internationally, the domestic command of religious neutrality. On every ground, the assertion that Nigeria is a Muslim country is not merely inaccurate demographically; it is unconstitutional, and a legal fiction the Constitution firmly rejects.
Table of Cases
- Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government [2016] 15 NWLR (Pt 1535) 177.
- Adamu v Attorney General of Borno State [1996] 8 NWLR (Pt. 465) 203.
Table of Legislation
- Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended).
International Instruments
- African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Bibliography
- Adegbite K, ‘Is Nigeria a Secular State?’ (The New Jurist, 28 May 2012) https://newjurist.com/isnigeria-a-secular-state/ accessed 4 September 2026.
- Bazuaye B (Professor), ‘Jurisprudence and Legal Theory’ (Lecture, Jurisprudence, University of Benin, Benin City, First Semester 2026).
- Olabimtan B, ‘Nigeria is a secular state’-lawyer sues FG over OIC membership’ (The Cable, 20 July 2021) https://www.thecable.ng/nigeria-is-a-secular-state-lawyer-sues-fg-over-oic-membership/ accessed 4 September 2026.
- Olaniyi S, ‘Nigeria’s membership of OIC is illegal, HURIWA declare’ (The Guardian, 1 May 2019) https://guardian.ng/news/nigerias-membership-of-oic-is-illegal-huriwa-declares/ accessed 4 September 2026.
- Omotola JS, ‘Beyond secularism: The shadow of religion on Nigerian democracy’ in J Adekunle (ed), Religion in politics: Secularism and national integration in modern Nigeria (Africa World Press 2009) 81.
Footnote(S):
1 Kehinde Adegbite,‘Is Nigeria a Secular State?’, (The New Jurist, 28 May 2012) https://newjurist.com/isnigeria-a-secular-state/ accessed 4 September 2026.
2 Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government [2016] 15 NWLR (Pt 1535) 177.
3 Professor Bright Bazuaye, ‘Jurisprudence and Legal Theory’ (Lecture, Jurisprudence, University of Benin, Benin City, First Semester 2026).
4 The Longman Dictionary (8th edn).
5 J. S. Omotola,‘Beyond secularism: The shadow of religion on Nigerian democracy’ in J. Adekunle, (ed), Religion in politics: Secularism and national integration in modern Nigeria (Africa World Press 2009) 81.
6 Adegbite (n 1).
7 Adegbite (n 1).
8 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 10.
9 CFRN 1999(as amended), s 38.
10 CFRN 1999(as amended), s 42.
11 CFRN 1999 (as amended), ss 1(1) and 1(3).
12 Adamu v Attorney General of Borno State [1996] 8 NWLR (Pt. 465) 203.
13 Abdulkareem & Anor v Lagos State Government (n 2) 177.
14 Segun Olaniyi, ‘Nigeria’s membership of OIC is illegal, HURIWA declare’, (The Guardian, 1 May 2019) https://guardian.ng/news/nigerias-membership-of-oic-is-illegal-huriwa-declares/ accessed 4 September, 2026 ; Bolanle Olabimtan, ‘Nigeria is a secular state’-lawyer sues FG over OIC membership’, (The Cable, 20 July 2021) https://www.thecable.ng/nigeria-is-a-secular-state-lawyer-sues-fg-over-oic-membership/ accessed 4 September, 2026.
15 CFRN 1999 (as amended), s 9.
16 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (New York City, 16 December 1966) art18.
17 ibid art 26.
18 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Paris, 10 December 1948) art18; African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Nairobi, 27 June 1981) art 2,3, and 8.
