SHARIAsource

On July 28, 1958, the colonial government of the Northern Region of Nigeria appointed a panel of jurists to examine the multiple systems of law existing in the region and to make recommendations for avoiding conflict among those plural systems. The multiple systems of law were English common law, British colonial statutory law, customary law, and Islamic law. The product of the panel’s deliberations was the Penal Code of 1960. This Penal Code abrogated the application of the sharīʿa to criminal mattes and abolished the judicial powers of the Islamic rulers. The Penal Code was based on the Sudan Penal Code of 1899, which had been enacted by the British colonial government. The Sudan Penal Code was itself derived from the Indian Penal Code, 1834. This document is the report of the Panel of Jurists.

According to the Penal Code of 1960, criminal laws purportedly based on sharīʿa ceased to exist in Northern Nigeria. In 2000, twelve states of Northern Nigeria sought to reintroduce Islamic criminal law, which had been partially in place prior to the 1960 law reforms. In pursuit of its vision to restore Islamic criminal law, the government of Bauchi state in Northern Nigeria set up a “Sharia Implementation Committee.” The Committee was charged with examining the legality and constitutionality of the proposed laws, inquiring into public opinion, and educating members of the public. To carry out this task, the Committee consulted Muslim jurists, state-trained lawyers, legal academics, and members of the public. This volume of Philip Ostien’s Sharīʿa Implementation Sourcebook contains the report of the Committee.