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The National Assembly: The Place Where Religious Ideas Kill Human Rights Bills By Dr. Ijabla Raymond

April 19, 2016

It is at once obvious that religion does not make people moral. Anyone asking for proof need not look any further than our dear nation.

Nigerians are a very religious people and, though a secular country, Nigerian lawmakers reference the Bible and the Quran to decide bills brought before them. Recently, our lawmakers stood up in the hallowed chamber and, one after the other, proceeded to quote passages from the Bible and the Quran to justify their objection to the Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill aimed at tackling discrimination against women in all sectors of our society. Of course, this is not the first time that religious convictions have thwarted human rights bills in the Nigerian Senate. Senator Yerima and his fellow zealots in 2013 successfully blocked the removal of a clause - Section 29 (4b) - from the 1999 Constitution that would have made marriage to child-bride illegal. He argued that Sharia law supersedes the secular constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As a result, marriage to children has continued to be practised in this country in complete disregard of all the well-documented health, economic and psychosocial problems that this practice foists on children. What a way for a society to treat its children and women in the 21st century?!

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Women make up half of the human race - no society that wishes to see itself at the forefront of development can afford to treat half of its population with such disregard and utter contempt. There is plenty of evidence to show that children born to women who are educated and gainfully employed do better than children born to poor and uneducated teenage mothers. Empowering women is one of the most progressive things that any society can do. Educate a man and you educate an individual, but educate a woman and you educate an entire family (and by extension, a nation). 

There is also the intense issue of LGBT rights. Once again, religious convictions became the basis for a legislation in 2014 that criminalises heterosexuality. Fourteen years imprisonment for consensual homosexual relationship but nothing for the paedophiles who daily assault and damage our children or the notorious child-witch hunters who inflict serious physical and emotional trauma on innocent children or the pastopreneurs who fraudulently enrich themselves at the expense of vulnerable church members or the thieving government officials who degrade our humanity by diverting funds meant for the provision of security, infrastructure and social services into their bottomless pockets.

It is at once obvious that religion does not make people moral. Anyone asking for proof need not look any further than our dear nation. There is a church or a mosque on practically every Nigerian street yet this country sits at the top of the list of the most corrupt countries in the world. There appears to be a correlation between religion, poverty and corruption because the countries which top the corruption index are consistently those that have high religiosity and high poverty levels. 

Religion gives its followers a feeling of righteousness and a reason to justify bigotry, ignorance, strife and human suffering, all in the name of God. It's funny how religious people who profess so much love for their fellow beings can be so quick to feel persecuted when more liberal societies grant basic human rights to their LGBT communities. How can a people profess so much love but at the same time deny others the basic rights that they so freely enjoy? 

The principles that underpin all religions are founded not on evidence, but on superstitions. For instance, some of the lawmakers argued that empowering women will cause them to become prostitutes and lesbians. Quite apart from the fact that we do not require our lawmakers or indeed the State to police our morality, where is the evidence for this preposterous claim? There is no denying the fact that the imported monotheistic religions of the Middle East are misogynistic. In Exodus 20:17, women are listed as men's properties alongside other possessions such as houses, servants and donkeys. In Quran 4:34, Allah admonishes Muslim men to beat their disobedient wives. We cannot advance as a society when we subscribe to ideologies that discriminate against half of our population. 

Religion is inherently divisive and is notorious for infringing on the rights of non-believers and minority groups. Only laws made on secular humanist principles can guarantee the rights of all peoples. Our lawmakers will do well to be guided by reason and best evidence at all times during their deliberations rather than by religious superstitions. This is 2016 - we should be matching forward, not regressing to the Middle Ages! 


Ijabla writes from the U.K. 

He can be contacted at [email protected]