SHARIA AND THE NORTHERN NIGERIA: TWENTY YEARS OF SHARIA RULE. THE BROKEN PROMISES AND THE HARD TRUTHS — WHAT WENT WRONG?
When twelve northern states adopted Sharia criminal law between 1999 and 2002, it was hailed as a historic return to moral order. Leaders promised a new dawn, an era where justice would be swift, corruption would shrink, crime would fall, and society would reflect the discipline and fairness of Islamic principles.
Two decades later, the distance between the promise and the reality is impossible to ignore. Sharia did not fail because the principles were wrong. It faltered because the politics surrounding it were shallow, hurried, and, in some cases, opportunistic. A legal system meant to uplift society ended up trapped between moral symbolism and political convenience.
Before Sharia, northern Nigeria faced tough challenges: deepening poverty, weak education, declining agriculture, and widening inequality. Governance was not perfect, yet the region maintained a legal uniformity that allowed coexistence and a shared understanding of rights and responsibilities. North was relatively peaceful. No bandits and terrorists and less armed Fulani attacks. What the North needed then and still needs now was serious reform, not a shortcut to legitimacy.
Sharia arrived as a sweeping political statement rather than a carefully prepared legal transformation. Sharia arrived not as a carefully planned legal reform but as a political wildfire, spreading from Zamfara to Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Jigawa, and beyond. It promised justice but delivered contradictions, chaos, religious violence, and intolerance. It delivered a parallel legal reality, one where amputations and stoning sentences made headlines, while elites who stole billions walked freely. Courts handed down harsh sentences to the poor, while powerful politicians who siphoned billions escaped any religious or civil accountability. Hisbah corps enforced dress codes and moral rules, yet had no capacity to tackle the violent actors who would later terrorize the region.
Sharia did not fix governance. It replaced accountability with appearance. While Hisbah seized musical instruments, governors seized local government funds. While youths were flogged for “immorality,” political leaders built mansions in Abuja and Dubai. While women were restricted in public life, bandits freely roamed forests that no government ever policed.
Instead of becoming a foundation for justice, Sharia became a theatre of piety, visible, loud, and politically useful. The deeper, structural problems of the North were left untouched. Schools collapsed further. Healthcare worsened. Youth unemployment rose. And extremist, terrorists and jihadist groups, sensing a vacuum between rhetoric and reality, exploited public frustration.
The region that once adopted Sharia to restore order eventually became the epicenter of insecurity in West Africa. Sharia also reshaped society in subtler ways. Public life became more restricted. Entertainment and culture shrank in many states. Women’s participation in politics and business grew more complicated. Interfaith relations were strained. Cities that once balanced tradition and modernity found themselves caught between competing identities—Muslim and secular, conservative, and cosmopolitan.
The North today is more religious in outward expression, yet no more just, no more secure, and no more prosperous than it was before 2000. That contradiction demands honesty.
Sharia is grossly incompatible with the Nigerian constitution, yet Northern politicians, religious extremists, and jihadists use it for electoral vanity and shade themselves from justice, fairness and accountability. SHARIA protects the rich and elite but oppresses the poor and downtrodden.
A region can not pray its way out of poverty, and it can not legislate its way out of insecurity. It must govern its way out. Sharia can not build roads. Sharia cannot train teachers. Sharia can not defeat terrorists with AK-47s. Sharia can not replace policy, planning, and the political will to lift 100 million northerners out of poverty. The North did not fail because it embraced faith.It failed because it used faith to avoid responsibility.
Sharia Laws
Northern Nigeria’s greatest challenge is not moral decline. It is the absence of leadership that matches the courage of its people. Sharia was introduced with the hope of renewal. That hope can still be redeemed, but only if public officials stop hiding behind religion and start delivering the basic ingredients of development: security, education, jobs, and the rule of law.
The future of the North will not be determined by slogans or symbols. It will be shaped by pragmatic leadership and policy choices anchored in real-world solutions. The region deserves nothing less.
As the North reflects on the Sharia era, the lesson is simple: faith can inspire a society, but governance determines its fate. Until then, the North will remain a region where the law is sacred, but life is disposable—and where piety overshadows progress.
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