*Argues Government Sponsorship of Pilgrimages Violates Nigeria’s Secular Status
A human rights NGO has filed a court action against the Federal Government of Nigeria, over its continued sponsorship of individuals Muslims and Christians on pilgrimages abroad.
The Human Rights and Empowerment Project Ltd/Gte (HREP), a public interest advocacy group recently instituted the action in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1872/24 at the Federal High Court against the Federal Government of Nigeria, to challenge the propriety of deploying public funds and tax-payers money towards sponsoring Christians and Muslims to attend pilgrimage or Hajj.
In a fundamental rights enforcement application filed at the Federal High Court, Lagos through their Counsel, Ikenna Okoli, SAN and Francis Moneke, the group contends that deploying public funds either at the national or State level for the sponsorship of Christians and Muslims going for pilgrimage or Hajj, runs foul of Section 42(1) of the 1999 Constitution by discriminating against other Nigerians belonging to other religions, or who don’t identify with any religion at all.
The said constitutional provision clearly prohibits the Government from discriminating against any citizen on the basis of belonging to a particular community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion.
The use of public funds to sponsor Nigerians who belong to the Christian or Muslim religion to attend and participate in such spiritual exercise, amounts to according special privilege or advantage to adherents of those religions, which are not similarly enjoyed by other Nigerians not belonging to those two religions.
In the fundamental rights enforcement application, the group sued as joint Defendants the President, the AGF, the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, and the National Assembly.
The group prayed the court for a declaration that the allocation of tax payers money by the Federal Government for the maintenance and operation of the Pilgrims and Hajj Commissions is unconstitutional, illegal and ultra vires the powers of the Federal Government. Consequently, the application seeks for the following orders of Court:
-Prohibiting Government at all levels from using public funds in sponsoring, funding and or subsidising of any religious Pilgrimages for Christians and Muslims or for any category of citizens, including Government functionaries.
-Prohibiting the Federal Government from further allocating funds to the 1st and 2nd Respondent for any purposes relating to pilgrimages.
-Striking down the Acts creating the Pilgrims and Hajj Commissions as being inconsistent with Sections 10 and 42 of the 1999 Constitution.
In what legal pundits see as a novel public interest action, HREP laments the humongous and outrageous quantum of public funds that government at all levels has sunk into sponsoring or subsiding of pilgrimages and Hajj in a country that is constitutionally a secular State, wherein adoption of any particular religion as State religion is constitutionally prohibited by Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution which provides that “the Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State religion”.