Eye Reporters Editorial
Sunday, July 6, 2025.
In a country choking under the weight of inequality, institutional corruption, and systemic failure, the latest call by the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) for sweeping constitutional amendments, including Sharia courts across the South-West and Fridays as nationwide public holidays, must be viewed with critical reflection, not reactionary sentiment.
MURIC, represented at the South-West Zonal Public Hearing by an academic of repute, Professor Ishaq Akintola who spoke through Dr. Jamiu Busari, has framed its demands as matters of inclusivity and fairness. In a vacuum, these calls may seem justifiable. After all, religious pluralism is enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution, and the freedom to practice one’s faith is a democratic right. But Nigeria does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a combustible reality, one where faith has often replaced reason, and religiosity has displaced responsibility.
Nigeria is a country where churches and mosques rise faster than schools or hospitals. It is not an atheist’s playground; it is, rather, a theocratic theatre where God and Allah are invoked at every government swearing-in, yet corruption eats at the nation’s marrow. A land where one person owns 500 estates, private jets, and a fleet of luxury vehicles, while over 80% of citizens live in multidimensional poverty, unable to feed, clothe or house themselves with dignity.
How then, in such a morally disoriented environment, does a religious rights group imagine that reducing the official workweek from five days to four is a national priority? MURIC’s call to declare Fridays as work-free, in a country already ranked among the nations with the highest number of public holidays globally, borders on impracticality and ideological excess.
Let us not forget: Nigeria is not a theocracy. We are a secular republic, at least in theory. Our Constitution does not permit the state to adopt any religion. Yet in practice, our policies and politics dance dangerously along sectarian lines, each side invoking divine legitimacy to extract concessions from a fragile system.
MURIC’s argument for Sharia Courts in the South-West hinges on historical and demographic factors. It insists that pre-colonial Yoruba Muslims had their own legal systems and that today’s substantial Muslim populations deserve legal autonomy through Sharia courts, “for Muslims only.” Constitutionally, states can establish such courts under Sections 275–279, but should they?
The real question is not whether such courts are legal, they can be. The question is whether Nigeria, in its present volatile state, can afford more religiously-defined boundaries. At a time when the country is grappling with ethno-religious tensions, displacement, insurgency, and secessionist calls, is the solution to institutionalize more lines of religious demarcation?
Should we now also call for Christian ecclesiastical courts in the East or traditionalist courts for adherents of indigenous religions? Where do we draw the line?
Nigeria’s productivity crisis is no longer a secret. A country where civil service lethargy is entrenched, where public servants work fewer hours than they pray, cannot afford to lose another workday to religion. Between Christmas, Easter, Sallah, Maulud, Good Friday, and New Year’s Day, we’ve already exhausted the calendar’s goodwill.
If MURIC’s logic stands, that religious equality demands another work-free day for Muslims, then perhaps fairness dictates that we simply declare all seven days holy and idle, consecrating our collective inertia once and for all.
One might expect that a professor, a custodian of inquiry and rational thought, would spearhead debates on how to reform education, eradicate poverty, or champion interfaith dialogue. Instead, we are served a pseudo-theocratic blueprint, cloaked in academic respectability. What does this say about the intellectual priorities of our society?
At the heart of this editorial is a simple, haunting question: What is Nigeria’s national priority? Is it more time off for prayer and fasting? Or is it a renewed social contract that delivers jobs, justice, and joy to the average Nigerian?
We are not, and must not become, a dual-religious state, one foot in the mosque and the other in the church, while our conscience drifts into the abyss. We must be a just state: one that guarantees freedom of worship but upholds the supremacy of reason, equity, and development.
Let religion remain a source of moral direction, not a tool for constitutional distortion. Let the mosque and the church build better citizens, not louder demands. And let those with access to power and platforms, professors, clerics, legislators, rise above the easy impulse to deepen division and instead help build a nation of equal citizens, not competing faiths.
If Fridays must become holy, let them be holy not because we shut down offices, but because we choose to open our hearts to truth, justice, and national rebirth.
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