THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE POLITICAL LIFE OF NIGERIA

The problem of the influence of religion on the political processes in Nigeria is described in the article. The main purpose of the article is to identify the role of religion in Nigeria and the extent of its influence on policy. Religious and ethnic heterogeneity of the population of Nigeria always affected the political preferences of its citizens. A similar situation can be observed from the time of the colonial dependence of Nigeria from the UK. And if the British colonial authorities used the religious question in their own purposes, in the independent Nigeria religion was often a decisive factor in determining the political position of the citizens. The British used the so-called "native authorities" till the end of the 1950s to govern the northern part of Nigeria. The south of the country, on the contrary, was controlled only by Christians, despite the fact that the Christian population of Nigeria was much less than the traditionalist population until the late 1960s. At the end of the colonial rule the ethno-regional political parties were organized. Religion (Islam) played the main role in the North, where the Northern People's Congress (NPC) had the most serious influence. The party called the Action Group oriented to the South-East (where the majority of the population were Yoruba Christians), and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) to the Southwest (Igbo Christians). Since they became independent, the influence of religion on politics and politics on religion increased noticeably in Nigeria. Being the majority of the population of the region in the north, Hausa and Fulani used Islam for self-identification in relation to the rest of the population of Nigeria. Some experts think that Christians in the south began to use religion to contrast themselves to Muslims. The politicization of religion emerged particularly acute after 1999, when the authorities of the northern states began to use Sharia to realize their own political ambitions at the local level. However, the debate about Sharia took place throughout the country, and the government of the southern states, fearing the spread of Islam, began to draw on religion in political matters very actively. There is an opinion that Christianity became part of the policy under the influence of "a challenge from Islam". However, Sharia, which was presented to the authorities of the northern states as a panacea for social and economic problems, did not justify the expectations of the population. If the governors gained their ratings due to the commitment to Islam and Sharia in in the elections of 1999 and 2003, by 2007 it became clear that the authorities were not able to fully introduce Sharia on their territory. Federal authorities interpreted this as " damping of Sharia". Thus, religion and politics had not just a close relationship, but complemented each other. Religion became a means of self-identification of the population and replaced the political platform of many politicians.