The official penchant for ignoring the proverbial leprosy and focusing attention on treating ringworm in the country is legendary. Whether it is the executive or legislative arm of government, there has always been a challenge with getting priorities right. The bill seeking to create a National Centre for Christian Education (NCCE) to regulate and set standards for the practice of Christianity in Nigeria, which has passed second reading at the Senate, is a perfect example of such misdirection of energy. Against the backdrop of the tottering domestic economy, high rate of unemployment, heightening insecurity, and political tension in the land, religious issues ordinarily pale into insignificance, and should not have attracted the prime attention of the legislature; at least not now.

Indeed, the bill raises a number of fundamental questions. Just how do you regulate the practice of Christianity? What power do you have over what people believe, let alone what they are to practise? Why dabble into matters that are personal to people? Christians are not exactly uniform in personal beliefs, so how do you set standards? Are the extant laws of the land which are very clear on what is appropriate conduct, with sanctions attached to violations, not sufficient to address the motivations for the unwarranted bill? This bill must die as it is not just superfluous but promises to create another needless bureaucracy with grave financial implications for the already lean national coffers. At a time that Nigerians are even interrogating the ability of states and the Federal Government to pay salaries from June, is this what senators should be discussing?

And more significantly, the bill is contrary to the spirit of the constitution which contains provisions that guarantee citizens’ freedom of belief and worship, among others. The senators say that their concern is to address the issues/disagreements that people have, but this is not peculiar to Christianity. Or is a plan afoot to extend the proposed regulation to other religions? This bill is distasteful and should be a cause for alarm for all Nigerians. It looks like the 9th Senate, even at the tail end of its tenure, is intent on pushing the country into religious conflagration. For how else can anyone construe this unnecessary and dangerous use of parliamentary time for an invidious end? Why would the lawmakers dabble into the practice of a particular religion in a secular state? Is the move supposed to be the Senate’s way of repudiating the secular status of the country?

Curiously, the main sponsor of the bill, Senator Binos Yaroe (Adamawa South), and the major supporters of the bill, Senators Istifanus Gyang (Plateau North) and Abba Moro (Benue South), are Christians from northern Nigeria. There are sizable populations of Christians in these three states and they might even be in the majority, but northern Nigeria is predominantly populated by Muslims. The point is that even if there are peculiar challenges to the practice of Christianity in that region, insistence on the enforcement of the extant laws should have been the way to go, not legislation of an unlawful regulation. This is no more than a recipe for chaos and an invitation to religious contention and agitation in the country. Nigerians want peace, not religious crisis, knowing the extent of destruction experienced by countries that have witnessed religious conflagration, hence the adoption of secularity in the country.

We advise those behind the current misadventure to quickly have a rethink and withdraw the bill. Religion is a personal affair under the Nigerian constitution and those who are Christians know how to practise their religion, just as adherents of other religions do, without the intrusion of the government. There are general rules under which all religions are practised in order to maintain peace and order and nothing else is needed. There is no need to provoke contentious religious sensitivities. The current move at the Senate is ill-advised and should be allowed to die a natural death.

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