By:Wale-Adewale Adeleke
The recent conviction and imprisonment of Chidozie Nwangwu, a traditional spiritual practitioner in Anambra State — under the banner of regulating supernatural claims and protecting the public — exposes a deeper problem than public safety. It exposes constitutional hypocrisy. When the coercive power of the state is deployed against one category of religious expression while functionally similar conduct in other religions proceeds without interference, the issue is no longer law enforcement. It is selective enforcement.
And selective enforcement against a minority belief system is discrimination.
At the core of religious freedom jurisprudence lies a principle so basic that its violation should be obvious: the state cannot privilege imported prestige religions while criminalizing indigenous spiritual systems when both operate on comparable metaphysical premises.
A secular constitutional order cannot treat one religion as faith and another as fraud simply because one enjoys social legitimacy and the other does not. Sections 38 and 42 of the Nigerian Constitution guarantee freedom of religion and protection from discrimination. Those guarantees mean little if they evaporate the moment belief systems fall outside cultural comfort zones.
Several state laws — framed as homeland security, public safety, or fraud-prevention measures — criminalize claims of supernatural intervention, rituals for prosperity or protection, or the receipt of money for spiritual services. Yet there is scarcely a church service without financial exhortations — tithes, offerings, “seed sowing” — accompanied by promises of divine blessing. Pay tithe and God will bless you”, “Sow seed and receive unmerited favor”, “Give and receive a hundred-fold return.” The structural elements are identical: a spiritual intermediary, financial contribution, divine agency, and expected material benefit. The only meaningful difference is social approval, not law.
Anthropology and religious history confirm what common sense already reveals: the relationship between ritual and anticipated divine response is universal. Biblical texts explicitly link giving with divine reward (“Bring the whole tithe… and see if I will not open the windows of heaven” — Malachi 3:10; “Give, and it will be given to you” — Luke 6:38). The Qur’an similarly promises divine increase for charitable acts (Qur’an 2:261; 65:2–3). The theological structure is the same. Criminalising one while protecting the other is not. It is, in this instance, legitimising subjective colonial hierarchy.
Criminal liability properly arises where there is fraud — deterministic guarantees, deception, coercion, or exploitation. But religious claims are almost always framed as dependent on divine will rather than human certainty. A traditional practitioner could easily adopt language identical to mainstream religious theology: rituals are performed, outcomes depend on divine forces, and faith is required. That formulation is indistinguishable from ordinary religious activity.
The state also cannot criminalize rituals by presuming, without evidence, that human sacrifice or violence is involved. Homicide is already illegal. Liability must rest on proof, not prejudice.
Equally important is the frequently invoked argument about psychological vulnerability. Individuals seeking healing, protection, prosperity, or relief from suffering are emotionally susceptible across all religious environments — churches, mosques, shrines, and spiritual healing centers alike. Hope under uncertainty, trust in authority figures, communal reinforcement, and confirmation bias are universal human phenomena, not features unique to indigenous religion. There is no empirical basis to assume that patrons of traditional spiritual systems are more vulnerable than congregants responding to promises of divine financial reward in mainstream religious settings.
Selectively criminalizing one while exempting the other cannot be justified as consumer protection; it reflects sociological bias rather than neutral regulation.
An analogy clarifies the absurdity. Conduct does not become lawful merely because it is familiar or socially dominant, nor criminal simply because it is unfamiliar or marginalized. Legal categories depend on objective elements, not cultural comfort. Likewise, religious conduct does not become criminal merely because one belief system is normatively privileged while another is normatively antagonized.
The constitutional question is therefore unavoidable: *Are functionally similar religious practices treated differently solely because of religious identity?* If Christian prosperity promises are lawful but indigenous ritual claims are criminalized, the state is privileging one metaphysical system while suppressing another. That is discrimination. Even Nigerian jurisprudence rejects such paternalism.
In *Medical and Dental Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal v. Okonkwo (2001) 7 NWLR (Pt. 711) 206,* the Supreme Court affirmed that constitutional protection extends even to beliefs others consider irrational or medically unsound. Comparative constitutional jurisprudence reinforces this neutrality principle. In *Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993),* the United States Supreme Court invalidated laws that purported to regulate public welfare but were in fact crafted to suppress a minority religion, holding that facial neutrality cannot serve as a pretext for religious targeting.
Indian constitutional law similarly protects minority religious conduct, as affirmed in *Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986) 3 SCC 615,* where the Supreme Court of India held that constitutional protection extends even to unpopular or misunderstood religious beliefs. South Africa’s Constitutional Court in *Prince v. President of the Law Society of the Cape of Good Hope 2002 (2) SA 794 (CC)* likewise emphasized that constitutional democracy requires tolerance, pluralism, and accommodation of minority religious practices rather than suppression of unfamiliar belief systems.
What obtains in Nigeria is disturbingly familiar. Colonial administrations systematically delegitimized indigenous spiritual systems while elevating imported religions as markers of civilization. Nearly a century after independence, that hierarchy persists — not through colonial governors, but through domestic law and internalized prejudice. The tragedy is not merely legal inconsistency. It is civilizational insecurity masquerading as regulation.
The issue is not whether supernatural claims are empirically verifiable. The state is not a theology examiner. The issue is whether the law is applied neutrally. Where conduct involves voluntary participation, spiritual mediation, faith-dependent outcomes, and absence of guaranteed exchange, selective criminalization targeted exclusively at indigenous religion violates constitutional equality.
*The central proposition remains simple: the state cannot privilege imported religions while criminalizing indigenous spiritual systems when both operate on comparable metaphysical premises.*
If churches may promise divine blessing for financial giving, traditional practitioners must be judged under the same legal standards — neither harsher nor more lenient. Equality before the law is not optional. It is the foundation of constitutional democracy.
*Wale-Adewale Adeleke, a public analyst, sent in this piece from Lagos*
