Human Rights and Empowerment Project Ltd/Gte (HREP) has prayed the Federal High Court in Lagos to stop the Federal Government from sponsoring Christians and Muslims to pilgrimage or Hajj using public funds.
The public interest advocacy group filed a fundamental rights enforcement application through its counsel Ikenna Okoli (SAN) and Francis Moneke.
It contends that deploying public funds either at the national or state level for the sponsorship of pilgrimage or Hajj contravenes Section 42 (1) of the 1999 Constitution by discriminating against Nigerians belonging to other religions or who do not identify with any religion at all.
The plaintiff said the constitutional provision prohibits the government from discriminating against any citizen for belonging to a particular community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion.
HREP argues that the use of public funds to sponsor Christians or Muslims to such spiritual exercises amounts to according special privilege or advantage to their adherents to the exclusion of others who are not.
The President, the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, the National Hajj Commission and the National Assembly are the defendants.
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The group prays the court for a declaration that the allocation of taxpayers’ money for the maintenance and operation of the Pilgrims and Hajj Commissions is unconstitutional, illegal and ultra vires the powers of the Federal Government.
The applicant seeks an order prohibiting the government at all levels from allocating or using public funds to sponsor, fund, and/or subsidise any religious pilgrimages for anyone.
HREP prays for the Acts creating the Pilgrims and Hajj Commissions to be struck down for being inconsistent with sections 10 and 42 of the 1999 Constitution.
In the novel public interest action, HREP laments the humongous and outrageous quantum of public funds sunk into sponsoring or subsidising pilgrimages and Hajj in a constitutionally secular state in which the adoption of any particular religion as a state religion is constitutionally prohibited.
Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution provides: “The government of the federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion.”
HREP contends that funding Christians and Muslims for pilgrimage or Hajj amounts to the adoption of those two religions as the state’s, which flies in the face of the clear constitutional proscription of such adoption.
According to Moneke, Executive Director of HREP, millions of Nigerians are neither Christians nor Muslims.
“Why then must such citizens be shortchanged in an arrangement wherein the resources of the state to which they should have equal claim are deployed to the benefits only of the Christian and Muslim citizens?
“Nothing can be more discriminatory, unfair and unjust than such selective use of the commonwealth over which every Nigerian ought to claim equal heritage.
“HREP brings this action pursuant to the preamble to the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules, 2009 paragraph 3e of which provides as a cardinal objective of the Rules that the court should encourage and welcome human rights cases even when brought by activists or NGOs acting on behalf of persons or groups affected by human rights violations.
“HREP has taken the bull by the horns to speak and act on behalf of millions of voiceless Nigerians affected by this discriminatory practice of Nigerian government that has clearly marginalised non-Christian and non-Muslim Nigerians for many years,” Moneke said.