The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has urged Nigerian law schools in Abuja and Yenagoa to allow female Muslim students wearing hijab to sit for the final examination ahead of their call to the bar, scheduled for Saturday, October 31.
MURIC said an alleged verbal directive by the Director-General of the Nigerian Law School barring hijab-wearing candidates from entering examination halls could infringe on their fundamental human rights.
The group’s Founder and Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, made the position known in a statement issued late Friday, October 30, describing the alleged directive as discriminatory and an unfair generalisation of an incident involving an individual candidate.
According to the statement, the directive reportedly followed an incident in which a female Muslim student wearing hijab was allegedly found with an earpod during an examination.
Akintola said while MURIC did not condone examination malpractice or indiscipline, the student involved should be investigated and appropriately sanctioned rather than extending the punishment to other Muslim candidates.
He argued that preventing all hijab-wearing female students from entering examination halls amounted to collective punishment and violated the principles of natural justice.
The MURIC director also recalled the 2017 controversy involving Amasa Firdaus, a law graduate who was denied access to the call-to-bar ceremony over her refusal to remove her hijab.
He said the law school should avoid repeating what he described as an earlier controversy, adding that forcing Muslim women to remove their hijab could amount to stripping them of their religious identity and causing psychological trauma.
Akintola further cited Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment, arguing that individuals should not be penalised for offences they did not commit.
He maintained that hijab was not responsible for examination malpractice and should not be treated as an instrument of cheating.
MURIC, therefore, appealed to the law school authorities to reconsider the alleged directive and allow innocent hijab-wearing candidates to participate in the examination without discrimination.
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The organisation also said it had received unverified reports that the Lagos campus had agreed to allow female Muslim students wearing hijab to write the examination.
It called on the Abuja and Yenagoa campuses to follow suit and ensure that candidates were not denied the opportunity to complete their legal education because of their religious dress.
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