Why The Yoruba People Should Not Trade Off Their Ways Of Life For The Sharia Laws in Nigeria

By Dr. Joel Ademisoye, United States

Hello, my fellow Omo Karo, Oji re bi. It is disappointing, disgusting and sad, to read about an idea or a proposal that the Fulani Islamic Sharia Laws to be imposed on the good Yoruba people of Southwestern Nigeria, in a Secular Nigerian State. First and foremost, I found the imposition of the Sharia Laws into the Yoruba family to be harmful, disruptive and destabilizing, because in my family composition, it consisted of diverse religious beliefs of Christianity and Islam, with the members peacefully co- existing and living in harmony.

As an indigenous of the Yoruba culture, all my life, I sincerely cherish and love our freedom, liberty and independence that we enjoy in our family and community in the southwestern region of Nigeria. Why would the Yoruba people subject themselves and their women and girls to the Islamic laws that are no longer relevant and practice in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia? We have seen how the Afghanistan women are being mishandled and mistreated by their men, not permitting them to attend a school in order to obtain a Western Education. I think this religious practice in Afghanistan and Northern Nigeria is selfish, discriminatory and dangerous for the Yoruba women and girls in Nigeria. Yoruba women are born free as a human being and are endowed with their inalienable rights, to grow, develop and prosper as a full human beings. Why the oppression and deprivation of the Yoruba women and girls their human rights owing to the imposition of the Sharia laws in the Yorubaland?

Consequently, by imposing the Sharia laws on the Yoruba people of Southwestern Nigeria, it is going to be a new day, when Hisbah Police, would be chasing us around to enforce the draconian Islamic – Sharia laws of moral values and behaviors like alcohol drinking and compliance with the fasting during the Ramadan, etc., as seen in Afghanistan and Northern Nigeria.

Without mincing words, the Sharia laws are assymetrical, contradictory to and in conflict with the Yoruba people’s culture and ways of life in Nigeria.