Constitutional Crisis, Religious Interpretations, and Nigerian Secularism

Section 10 is one of the most cited portions of Nigeria's 1999 constitution believed to be raising contentious issues regarding whether the country is religious or nonreligious. First, the section is seen as giving the impression that the government of the Nigerian federation or a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion. This constitutional provision has severally been faulted since the succeeding statements of the same section declare that Nigerians shall live together in unity as one indissoluble sovereign entity under God. These provisions appear contradictory because the former dissociates religion from politics, civil and public administration, while the latter draws attention to the fact that living under God is crucial for peace and unity in the country. The impression is that the Nigerian constitution is ambivalent, particularly in its stipulations on secularism. Within the framework of this study, secularism refers to an underlying philosophical idea that provides the guiding principle for the modernization and development of the state.