ARE CANON LAW AND CIVIL LAW FOES OR FRIENDS? REFERENCE TO NIGERIA

Abstract

The call for Canon Law to be ‘reviewed, collated, synthesized and fully incorporated into the judicial system’ of Nigeria1 was heard for the first time, so to speak, in the wake of the Sharia controversy during the ‘great debate’ that followed the publication of the recommendations of the Constitution Drafting Committee 1976-1977, and also at the constituent Assembly 1977-1978. The Committee had then recommended the establishment of a Sharia Court of Appeal with Grand Mufti, Deputy Grand Mufti etc.2 to be integrated with the national judicial structure on the federal level. The intransigence with which some Muslims insisted on the adoption of this system and the equally unyielding and stiff opposition with which this demanded was met by a great majority of Nigerians are now history which we need not go into here. The call for Canon Law Courts for Christians was then made by way of reaction to this Muslim move. It was however not made with much insistence or zeal by its advocates. When the sharia controversy seemed to abate, the call for the canon law system apparently fizzled off; and not even the momentous promulgation of the then new Code of Canon Law on January 25, 1983 by Pope John Paul II3 appeared to have awakened much enthusiasm on the part of even the enlightened Christians. Recently, this call for mainstreaming of Canon Law into the Nigerian legal system resurfaces again as a reaction to first, the expansion of Islamic law application to include criminal and other aspects and enforced with state machinery, and second to the agenda of Islamization of an entire country that is supposed to be a secular state. This study deems it apt and timeous once again to ask and respond to these questions: What is Canon Law, anyway? What is its scope and underlying philosophy? ‘How do Canon Law principles relate or compare with the civil law system? In fact, are Canon Law and Civil Law friends or foes? Are both systems miscible or otherwise? A reflection on some of these and like posers on the subject will no doubt be rewarding.