Closure of Schools During Ramadan Violates Rights to FORB and Education

By Leo Igwe 

Humanists are deeply concerned by the directive to shut down schools during the month of Ramadan in Muslim-majority states because it violates rights to Freedom of Religion or Belief (FORB)and education. Bauchi and Katsina have issued directives against the operation of schools during Ramadan. In separate press statements, authorities urged public and private schools to vacate during the Muslim fasting period. In Bauchi, the Ministry of Education changed the academic calendar and made February 26, 2025, the official closing date for all nursery, primary, and secondary schools in the state. All schools were directed to be on holiday from March 1st to April 5, 2025. The Ministry of Education also warned schools against defying this order. In Katsina, the Sharia police, known as Hisbah, asked schools to close for Ramadan. They warned against conducting extra lessons during this period. Official and unofficial closure of schools will apply in other Muslim-dominated and sharia implementing states in the country. 

Sharia was imposed on Muslim-dominated states in Northern Nigeria in early 2000, and proponents stated that Sharia implementation was only for Muslims. But this development and others belie this claim. Sharia is not only for Muslims. Sharia law is enforced on all persons. Sharia provides a pretext for Islamists and jihadists to impose political Islam on all Nigerians despite their beliefs or nonbeliefs. Measures must be taken to address this unfortunate development before it is too late. 

The directive to close all schools during Ramadan exemplifies Islamic tyranny. It violates the right of students and teachers to freedom of religion or belief. All Nigerians are not Muslims. Not everyone in Bauchi and Katsina states professes Islam. Christians, and adherents of other faiths and none exist in these places and have the right to practice their faith or belief. Some Muslims who voiced support for this directive claimed that this closure would help students and teachers to observe Ramadan. But if there is no compulsion in religion as stated in the Quran, why should Islamic state authorities compel students and teachers to stay at home during this fasting period?

Again constitutionally, Nigeria is a secular state and has no state religion. Section 10 of the constitution prohibits state support or promotion of a religion. It states that no part of the federation or state should adopt a religion as a state religion. However, this directive makes Islam the state religion in Bauchi and Katsina. It discriminates against non-muslims and demonstrates state bias and support for Islam. These states do not extend the same facility to Christians during the fasting period, do they?

Humanists urge the Nigerian government to rescind this order to close all schools during the month of Ramadan and guarantee the rights of all Nigerians to freedom of religion or belief and education. 

No Nigerian child should be forced to choose between fasting and going to school. Ramadan should not be observed at the expense of education for all.

Leo Igwe is a board member of the Humanists Association of Nigeria and Humanists International, UK.

Leo Igwe

Leo Igwe (born July 26, 1970) is a Nigerian human rights advocate and humanist. Igwe is a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and has specialized in campaigning against and documenting the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. He holds a Ph.D from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Igwe’s human rights advocacy has brought him into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, such as Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, because of his criticism of what he describes as their role in the violence and child abandonment that sometimes result from accusations of witchcraft. His human rights fieldwork has led to his arrest on several occasions in Nigeria. Igwe has held leadership roles in the Nigerian Humanist Movement, Atheist Alliance International, and the Center For Inquiry—Nigeria. In 2012, Igwe was appointed as a Research Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation, where he continues working toward the goal of responding to what he sees as the deleterious effects of superstition, advancing skepticism throughout Africa and around the world. In 2014, Igwe was chosen as a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and in 2017 received the Distinguished Services to Humanism Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Igwe was raised in southeastern Nigeria, and describes his household as being strictly Catholic in the midst of a “highly superstitious community,” according to an interview in the Gold Coast Bulletin.[1] At age twelve, Igwe entered the seminary, beginning to study for the Catholic priesthood, but later was confused by conflicting beliefs between Christian theology and the beliefs in witches and wizards that are “entrenched in Nigerian society.”[1] After a period of research and internal conflict due to doubts about the “odd blend of tribalism and fundamentalist Christianity he believes is stunting African development,” a 24-year-old Igwe resigned from the seminary and relocated to Ibadan, Nigeria