This story is, to me, incredibly depressing.
To think that these laws were reintroduced only recently. For awhile, there was a hope that Nigeria was moving toward more modern humanistic values. Apparently not.
timesonline.co.uk
God will get me through, says
mother
by Janine di Giovanni
Nigeria tolerates the Miss World beauty contest and
brutal Islamic laws
AS MORE than 80 young women arrived amid great
fanfare in the Nigerian capital to take part in the Miss
World contest, an illiterate 31-year-old woman sat in a
stark room a few miles away contemplating a very
different fate. Amina Lawal has been sentenced to
death by stoning.
The contestants flew in from London with teased hair
and full make-up, teetering on stilettos across a thick
red carpet rolled out in their honour at the Abuja Hilton.
Ms Lawal sat barefoot, nursing the sick baby girl who
has brought her another form of fame.
The beauty queens welcomed so effusively by the
Nigerian Government on Monday night are symbols of
the West’s obsession with sex, celebrity and material
gain. “We’re here to put Nigeria on the map of
international beauty,” declared Julia Morley, the Miss
World president.
Ms Lawal, by contrast, has become a symbol of
hardline Islam’s intolerance of any form of moral laxity,
at least among the poor. For the alleged adultery that
led to the birth of Wasila, now ten months old, she is to
be buried up to her neck and stoned until she dies.
Several contestants have boycotted the Miss World
pageant in protest, but Ms Lawal is only dimly aware of
the global controversy that her case has caused. There
is no electricity in her village of Kurami, two hours north
of Abuja, let alone television.
“I appreciate the sympathy,” she told The Times, but her
immediate concerns are finding medical care for her
daughter and wondering whether she will live to see
Wasila walk. Unless her second appeal succeeds she
will be executed as soon as Wasila is weaned or by
2004, whichever is sooner.
Ms Lawal comes from the northern state of Katsina, one
of a dozen in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north that
have adopted Islamic law, or Sharia. I brought her to
Abuja after protracted negotiations through a
middleman. For a white woman to enter her secluded
village would increase the villagers’ hostility towards
her. As she talks she seems oddly unafraid, bearing the
horror of her sentence with a terrible fatalism. Her life
has always been difficult, she says, and this is one
more task that God has put before her.
“I don’t remember much of my childhood, it was too
hard,” she said. “The day was spent just getting enough
food. What is happening to me now is something that
God will take care of.”
Like thousands of other women in northern Nigeria, she
was married before puberty. She had two children as a
teenager. “I was young but I loved my husband,” she
said. “It was all I knew.”
He abandoned her, however, for reasons she still does
not understand and she returned to live with her father
and his four wives.
One day, after accepting a lift on a motorcycle, she was
raped by a man she thought was a friend. When it
became obvious that she was pregnant the
fundamentalist vigilantes, known as Hisbah, turned her
over to the Sharia court.
When Ms Lawal heard her sentence, she bore it
stoically. “I will get through this, with God,” she
whispered, holding Wasila against her cheek. She tries
not to think about what will happen to this baby, or her
other children, if the sentence is carried out.
Ms Lawal is not the only victim of Sharia, which was
introduced in the Zamfara state as a political platform by
the campaigning governor in 1999, then quickly taken
up by 11 other northern states.
There are four other cases of women sentenced to be
stoned for adultery. There are also 11 children in Sokoto
state awaiting amputation for stealing.
Ms Lawal’s lawyer, Hauwa Ibrahim, said: “We have
heard they are waiting for the amputation machine to
arrive.” Ms Ibrahim is a human rights activist who works
pro bono defending victims of Sharia. Her first case
involved pleading unsuccessfully against a woman’s
sentence of 180 lashes for lying and having sex outside
marriage.
The victims have one thing in common: they are poor.
They have all, according to aid workers, been used as
examples by the court to frighten others into
submission. “The rich do exactly the same thing but
they are not punished,” said one worker. “One of the
judges who tried these women got his girlfriend
pregnant. Other members of the Sharia court had
daughters who got pregnant. Nothing ever happens to
them.”
Shortly before the Miss World contestants arrived I sat in
a field two hours away in Niger State with Amadu
Ibrahim, a 30-year-old man who will also die by stoning
if his sentence is upheld, along with his former lover,
Fatima.
The couple have become the Romeo and Juliet of their
village, New Gawu, punished because they fell in love
while Amadu was married and Fatima between
husbands.
When Fatima became pregnant Mr Ibrahim would not
marry her. So she married another man. He left her
when he discovered the truth. Fatima’s father then
turned the couple over to the police. They were
sentenced to die even though their relationship
occurred before Sharia was introduced.
Fatima is now guarded by officials three hours away
from her village, but Mr Ibrahim, a firewood stacker, is
allowed to remain at home with his teenage wife, Awa,
and his children. He says that he is not afraid to die but
is terrified of the stoning. “I think about it all the time
even if you see a smile on my face,” he said.
The Miss World contest has brought the plight of these
victims to the world’s attention, but as Ms Ibrahim, says:
“When the contest is finished everyone will go home
and we will still be here.”
For now at least, Nigeria’s federal government insists
that it will never allow Ms Lawal’s execution to take
place. “I assure you, no Nigerian has been stoned or
will be stoned,” Dubem Onyiam, Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs, told the Miss World contestants. “Relax
and enjoy yourselves.”
Ms Ibrahim is not so hopeful, though she pledges to
keep fighting right up to the Supreme Court. “There are
a lot of fanatics, a lot of fundamentalists, who can do
what they want,” she said grimly. |
