IN Kano state, religious police known as Hisbah are violating the freedom of many Nigerians in the name of religion. The Hisbah operations have also been surrounded by hypocrisy and preference to persecute the low and middle-class residents of the state. The ICIR’s Lukman ABOLADE reports.

At around 11 p.m. one Sunday evening in June 2021, a student of Bayero University, Kano Racheal James* and her three other roommates, were having dinner in their sitting room when they began to hear loud knocks on the door and voices shouting ‘open this door’ in the Hausa language.

“They were banging the door like they wanted to break in, telling us to open the door. When they came in, I was scared because they held long machetes and big long sticks called (Gora). I felt they were going to kill me,” Racheal said.

She told The ICIR that it took a few minutes for her to recognise that the men who came into their house were the Hisbah religious police officers.

The Hisbah in Kano is religious police established by the State government to enforce Sharia laws among Muslims.

Racheal said one of the Hisbah officers pulled her by her hair when she refused to follow them into their patrol van.

“I did not want to follow them; one of them just pulled me by my hair and dragged me into their Peugeot van that midnight,” she narrated.

Racheal and her roommates inquired what offence they had committed; the Hisbah officers said she was cohabiting with male students.

A day in Hisbah cell

After their arrests, the Hisbah officers went to other houses in the community to enforce more arrests that night.

“When we eventually got to their office, they kept us in a room that night and took the guys elsewhere and early in the morning, they took us to another place where they kept other arrested persons,” Racheal said.

She told The ICIR that there were many young female children of about eight, ten and fifteen years old that the Hisbah Police arrested.

Racheal said a pregnant child of about 15 years was locked up with chains and padlock inside the cell.

They said she escaped from her husband’s house, so they beat her up tied her legs with heavy chains and padlock; even though she was pregnant, they still beat her up, and she was bleeding. It was terrible,” she said.

She noted that most of the children in the female custody of the Hisbah had spent about one month in their custody.

On Thursday evening, Racheal was asked to sign an undertaking that she would not stay with men anymore or be charged to court.

“They wrote it themselves and told me to sign under it, I was later released on Thursday evening around 8:30 p.m., and I already missed my test.

Hisbah21:
get out,we are the Hisbah.. go and sleep

idiots with quote me