Navigating Between National Unity and Political Expediency: The Federal Government’s Response to Substate Identity Policy in Nigeria and Canada

Abstract

What factors shape the federal or national governments’ responses to substate identity policies within deeply diverse federal systems? This article answers this question by analysing the role of the President or Prime Minister as ‘bearers’ of national unity, when confronted with (exclusivist) identity policies that may threaten the inclusion of all citizens, in particular minorities residing in jurisdictions dominated by a dominant (ethnocultural, linguistic or religious) group. The empirical evidence draws on the experiences of Canada and Nigeria, focusing in particular on the tension over secularism and the Muslim veil in Québec public institutions, and the adoption of Sharia by twelve Muslim-majority states in Nigeria. The paper demonstrates that while the need to uphold cultural diversity could explain the federal government’s responses to the identity policies implemented in these regions, the primary driver of the responses was the president and prime minister’s political goal of re-election and retaining power. The paper contributes to the literature by stressing the similarities in the political reflexes and strategies utilized by political actors in managing the tension between the constitutional principles of self-rule and shared rule in two federations that are often thought to be so different and, hence, incomparable.

Introduction

One of the most urgent problems that deeply diverse societies are confronted with in the twenty-first century is resolving conflicts over cultural pluralism (UNDP, 2004). The bargaining process over cultural differences is politically challenging and inherently conflictual across modern democracies because they usually relate to collective self-identity and self-perception, are often based on the non-negotiable characteristics of a community, and may structure the redistribution of resources and individual's economic opportunities (cf. Moreno & Colino, 2010; Weinstock, 2001). As a result, tensions between majority and minority groups, and central and regional political leaders are quite usual in deeply diverse societies. Quite often, it involves, as Luc Turgeon et al. (2019) imply, ‘a tale of two liberalism’ in which partners in federal associations promote contrasting, if not contradictory, political visions and public policies. Finding the right balance between upholding national unity and accepting the legitimacy of these contrasting visions to coexist within a single sovereign state is one key normative task that some of the most distinguished contemporary political philosophers have devoted their work to (for instance Kymlicka, 1995; Laforest, 2015; Norman, 2005; Requejo, 2005).

Nigeria and Canada—our immediate concern in this article—are notable example of ‘complex societies’ (Mathieu, 2022) in which competing ethno-cultural and regional claims are central features of the political landscape (Gagnon & Simeon, 2010; Suberu, 2010). Both countries reveal socio-political dynamics instilled from strong desire for the protection of substate identities, e.g. the Muslim-majority states in Nigeria or Francophone Québec in Canada. As such, the management of this kind of ‘deep diversity’ (cf. Taylor, 1994) poses significant challenges to public authorities, peaceful intergroup relations, and individual freedom and citizenship rights.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the challenges and dilemmas posed by diversity and political efforts to mitigating it by examining the federal chief of the executive’s responses (or lack thereof) to the design of identity policy at the substate levels in both countries. To avoid any conceptual ambiguity, by ‘identity policy’ we refer to public policies that relate to the definition and articulation of the (perceived) non-negotiable characteristics of a given community.

Broadly speaking, substate governments in federal systems usually possess constitutional rights over the design of identity policy within their respective jurisdictions, while the federal government is supposed to cater for all citizens, irrespective of where they reside within the federation. Therefore, a ‘clash of legitimacies’ (Gagnon, 2021) oftentimes emerges, whereas federated entities with strong cultural or religious character may promote identity policies to protect and promote this singularity (collective goals), while the federal government may be more inclined to develop all-inclusive pan-national identity policies (prominence of individual rights over (minority groups) collective goals)—even though in practice it also tends to reflect specific (majoritarian) cultural traits (Gagnon et al., 2011). Situating itself within the parameters of this pan-national / substate clash of legitimacies, this paper asks the following questions: How have federal chiefs of the executive responded to the design of substate identity policies that appear to threaten the inclusion of all citizens, in particular minorities residing in jurisdictions dominated by a major ethnocultural, linguistic or religious group? Ultimately, what factors shape the federal governments’ responses to what minority groups may consider as exclusivist substate identity policies?

In addressing these questions, the Canadian case examines Québec’s unofficial policy of interculturalism against the background of the federal government's policy of multiculturalism, focusing specifically on the elevation of tensions in public discourse following the ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate and subsequent discussions over secularism and the place of the Muslim veil in Québec public institutions. The Nigerian case examines the treatment of Christian minorities in the twelve Muslim-majority states that adopted Sharia with the return to democratic rule in 1999. This examination focuses on the tension between these substate governments’ perspective (mobilized by political elites and Muslim civil society) that Sharia enhances Muslims religious rights and the federal government’s efforts to enforce a common citizenship that prohibits state religion and the imposition of Sharia on non-Muslims. Our goal in this paper is not to examine the morality or ethics of these responses per se, but to underscore the dilemma that presidents or prime ministers in deeply diverse federations are confronted with as they navigate the need to ensure national unity and political survival.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 provides the justification for the study, explaining the rationale for comparing Nigeria and Canada. Section 2 delves into conceptual framing and literature review of the key terms used in the paper. Section 3 provides the analytical framework. This is followed by section 4 which focuses on the case studies of identity policies in Nigeria and Canada. Section 5 analyses and discusses the federal government’s responses to said identity policies in northern Nigeria and Québec, and provides most plausible explanations for these outcomes. The conclusion follows.

1. Comparing Canada and Nigeria

From the onset, it is worth stating that, according to key characteristics, Nigerian and Canadian federal systems are indeed quite different from one another. For example, Canada is a long-established federation (1867); while Nigeria’s formal federal structure was designed in 1954. Yet they share some similarities. They are both democracies: Nigeria is a presidential democracy since 1999 (after several failed attempts) and Canada is a parliamentary democracy. Also, both countries have had waves of mobility to regions dominated by a dominant ethnocultural or religious group leading to the growth of territory-based minority groups, even though the nature of the human movement is different, with Nigeria’s being internal migration while the ‘visible minority’ groups in Quebec developed through immigration to Canada. But above all, both are formal federal systems. Indeed, federalism has been instrumental in the management of diversity in Canada (cf. Webber, 1994). This has also been the case for Nigeria (Suberu, 2010). However, as the identity policies examined in this article will demonstrate, managing diversity remains a difficult task, and federalism as a tool for conflict management is frequently contested in both Nigeria and Canada (Gagnon & Simeon, 2010; Suberu, 2010).

2. Federalism, Diversity, and Togetherness

A good deal of scholarly work has dealt with the connection between federalism, diversity, and the quest to accommodate minorities while also promoting some kind of togetherness (cf. Gagnon & Tremblay, 2020; Mathieu et al., 2020). Most comparative studies of federalism and federal systems have combined various legal, political, social, and economic elements (Birch, 1966, pp. 15–21). Two salient conceptions of federalism relevant for this paper are the institutional or legal approach (Wheare, 1946, p. 11) and the sociological perspective (Livingston, 1952; 1956). In this article, following the work of prominent federalism scholars (cf. Burgess, 2006, 2012; Gagnon, 2021), we promote a combination of both.¹

As for ‘diversity’, Giovannini defines it as ‘any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another’ (2004, p. 22). These dimensions are variegated and complex, making many to talk about ‘diversity in diversity’ (Argyriades, 2001). Our focus here is on cultural diversity, in particular the one that is based on ethno-cultural, religious, and linguistic identities. To reiterate, this kind of diversity is more complex to manage because they are based on the collective self-identity of a group, which tend to be central to the group’s cultural survival and are hence easily mobilized and politicized (Moreno & Colino, 2010).

The literature on the connection between diversity and social solidarity has expanded rapidly in recent years and has pointed to contradictory conclusions (see Gesthuizen et al., 2009; Popelier & Sahadzic, 2019; Putnam, 2007; Sahadzic, 2020; Tolsma et al., 2009). What this debate points to is that while ethnocultural diversity may or may not automatically lead to lack of social cohesion or conflict, it has major implications for the way polities organize their citizenship regime and deal with social justice issues (Brodie, 2002; Harzig & Juteau, 2003). This is especially so as it impacts ‘the definition of the political community and the conditions of inclusion—and exclusion—in the community (who belongs and under what conditions)’ (Abu-Laban, 2009; Jenson & Papillon, 2001, p. 3; UNDP, 2004).

In the end, several scholars have argued that federalism is a successful device for the accommodation of cultural diversity within political systems (cf. Guénette & Mathieu, 2023; Livingston, 1952; Osaghae, 2001; Watts, 2008). However, because federations differ in terms of the degree of (de)centralization and governance practices, their capacity to manage these diversities varies across time and space (Bermeo, 2002). In particular, while the promise of federalism lies in its combination of shared-rule and self-rule (Bakke & Wibbels, 2006, p. 2), there is always the possibility that federalism can be used as the ideational and power resources for the mobilization of substate identities, hence fuelling ethnocultural conflicts rather than mitigating them (Erk & Anderson, 2009).

How do federal governments—and the chief of the executive branch in particular—respond to such policies that uphold the identity of the majority group in a substate federated entity but are perceived by minority groups within it as oppressive and existential threat to their own identity and rights? This article aims to provide answer to this question by using the comparative cases of Nigeria and Canada. But in answering this question, we reject any monocausal answer. Reality is always complex, hence context matters, and political motivations are necessarily shaped by a plurality of factors. Nevertheless, we contend that some factors play a more significant role than others. Accordingly, we argue, on the one hand, that respect for the specific values associated with the majority group in a substate entity partly explains the federal government’s responses to the identity policies implemented in Muslim-dominated states in Nigeria, and Francophone Québec in Canada. On the other hand, we argue that the primary driver of the responses was the president and prime minister’s political goal of re-election and retaining power. The main analytical section of this paper therefore concerns itself with illuminating the processes through which the federal government's responses reflect the goal of political self-preservation of the president and prime minister at the historical moments that this study focusses on in both countries.

3. Analytical Framework: Understanding the Politics of Identity Policies in Nigeria and Canada through the Lens of Actor-Centred Historical Institutionalist Perspective

This paper is based on qualitative comparative analysis utilizing documentary and historical sources. In presenting our cases and argument, we rely on historical institutionalists understanding of political institutions as a complex constellation of rules (formal and ideational rules), structure and agency in order to provide a more persuasive explanation of identity politics. As André Lecours suggested, while the dominant cultural explanation of identity politics has provided important insights about the subjective dimensions of this phenomenon, ‘its core assumptions limit its ability to provide insight into the construction, transformation, politicization and mobilization of these identities’ (Lecours, 2000, p. 501). Lecours advocates the use of a decidedly political approach which historical institutionalism (HI) represents to overcome the shortcoming of the dominant cultural perspective. HI offers a framework that gives heightened attention to the fact that in managing diversity, political institutions (such as federalism) not only shape ‘social and political outcomes and affect as well as reflect identities’ they are also characterized by ‘structure-agency relationships’ (Lecours, 2000, p. 502).

Connecting the above insights to our previous definition of federalism, we argue that the formal constitutional division of power and the existence of majoritarian substate identities provide an arena for conflicts between political elites representing the various orders of governments in a federation by distributing political power, defining their interests, shaping the strategies they can adopt, and socializing them into the institutions. On the other hand, we contend that it is also the case that political actors’ agency is not predetermined or determined solely by institutions (Lecours, 2000). Given that institutions are ‘deeply political and contested’ structures ‘underpinned by power politics’ (Thelen, 2010, p. 54) and hence ‘the object of strategic action’ (Hall, 2010, p. 204), scholarly works on federal institution also caution us to not attribute sole explanatory powers to these institutional structures (Erk, 2013). Rather, we are enjoined also to pay serious attention to the role of agency, or the mutually constitutive relationship between institutions and actors who operate these institutions (Hall, 2010; Jackson, 2010). In this interaction, actors not only enact institutional rules which subsequently constrain them, they also change, reconfigure or entrench these institutions (Thelen, 1999, 2010; Thelen & Steinmo, 1992).

This study uses this understanding of mutually interdependent relationship between institutions and actors (Jackson, 2010, p. 63) in explaining similarities in the responses of the federal government to substate identity policies in Nigeria and Canada. The accent on agency draws attention to actor-centred institutionalism (Mayntz & Scharpf, 1995) which, as Scharpf (1997, p. 1) noted,

proceeds from the assumption that social phenomena are to be explained as the outcome of interactions among intentional actors—individual, collective, or corporate actors, that is—but that these interactions are structured, and the outcomes shaped, by the characteristics of the institutional settings within which they occur.

However, in utilizing this perspective, this paper does not aim to settle the debate about the proper balance between structure and agency. Rather, it aims to apply a perspective that acknowledges the primacy of institutions, in this case, federal institutions, but at the same time it ‘provides more room for human agency in an otherwise structuralist account’ (Emmenegger, 2021, p. 608).

4. Case Studies

1. Nigeria

A. Nigeria and the management of cultural diversity: context and background

Nigeria is a deeply diverse country with over 200 million people from 374 ethnic groups (Otite, 1990), three geographically prominent ethnic groups, and numerous other communities. It has used federalism to accommodate its complicated ethnic and national variety (Osaghae & Suberu, 2006; Suberu, 2001, 2010). Yet, in spite of its success in averting national disintegration, the design and practice of the Nigerian federalism remains deeply contested (Suberu, 2004, 2010). Not only has it been implicated in the country’s economic underdevelopment (Okpanachi, 2011a), it has also been criticized for exacerbating the country's ethno-cultural and regional cleavages, including the degeneration of federal and regional governments’ relationships which led to the Biafran civil war of 1967 to 1970 (Suberu, 2004), and, in our case, the conflict over the implementation of Sharia with the return to democratic rule in 1999.

B. Nigeria: the Sharia policy and crisis as major challenges to the management of diversity

With Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, the unprecedented extension of Sharia law into the domains of criminal justice in 12 northern Nigerian states—Zamfara, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, and Yobe—created significant intergovernmental and intergroup conflict. In adopting a stringent version of Sharia law these Muslim-dominated states capitalized on the ‘somewhat ambiguous clause [in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution] that empowered a state assembly […] to confer additional jurisdiction on the Sharia Court of Appeal’ (Suberu, 2009, p. 551). Based on this provision for constitutional asymmetry, which was intended to accommodate the Islamic identities in the north through the provision of Sharia law in personal matters, the legislators of the 12 states successively extended Sharia to criminal justice and established Islamic courts with jurisdiction over criminal matters (Human Rights Watch, 2004; Suberu, 2009). The state governors also held public celebrations in support of the new laws, claiming that the adoption of Sharia is consistent with Nigeria’s cultural pluralism, and that represents a return to the ‘glorious’ pre-colonial period when Islamic law governed Muslims in the north before it was marginalized by the country’s British-influenced legal system (Suberu, 2009). For instance, Governor Sani Yerima had declared that implementation of ‘sharia in totality in Zamfara State’ was necessary ‘to ensure justice, protection of people’s lives and property and sanctity which cannot be guaranteed without making the sharia our guide’ (Muazzam, 2007, p. 117).

The implementation of Sharia resulted in the (re)introduction or intensification of a number of Islamic practices and reforms, including the prohibition of alcohol sales and consumption, gender segregation in public schools, non-mixing of men and women in public transportation, the consumption of certain ‘unIslamic’ foods like pork, and increased informal restrictions on Christian proselytizing (Okpanachi, 2011b). This development resulted in a highly charged politics of identity and conflict (Muazzam, 2007; Okpanachi, 2011b; Suberu, 2009). The fervour with which Sharia policies were introduced, as well as their actual or potential implementation, created insecurity and fear of being marginalized and violently victimized among Nigeria's Christians and other non-Muslims. That was the case specifically for the Christian minority in the northern states that introduced the revitalized Sharia, as it reignited historical and pre-existing tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim. In addition to the tension and fear, there was open violence as a result of this dispute in Kaduna state, where Christians make up at least 40% of the population and where 2000 + people were killed as a result of the violence caused by the attempt by the state’s House of Assembly to introduce Sharia law. The violence also spread to the predominantly Christian southeastern state of Abia, where Muslims were attacked in retaliation for the killing of Christians from the region during the Kaduna crisis (Human Rights Watch, 2003).

2. Canada

A. Canada and the management of ethnocultural diversity: context and background

Just like Nigeria, Canada has made a success of its federal system (Kymlicka, 1998). Clearly, the federal principle has helped its population of 39 million people to coexist relatively peacefully despite marked and complex differences (Gagnon & Simeon, 2010). Even though significant centralizing dynamics were at play during the first few decades of Canada’s federal system which came into force with the enactment of the 1867 British North America Act, now known as the Constitution Act, 1867, Canada can be considered as one of the most decentralized federal systems in the world (Requejo, 2020, p. 398). In particular, due to formal division of power but also because of contemporary intergovernmental relations, the province of Quebec enjoys greater institutional autonomy than most minority nations in the West (Mathieu & Guénette, 2018, p. 233). However, centralizing practices are still prominent in Canadian politics, notably through the ‘spending power’ of the federal government (Gagnon & Garon, 2019).

Yet, the Canadian federal system, just like Nigerian federalism, is far from perfect. Continuing challenges include dealing with demands for more autonomy and recognition from Québec and Indigenous peoples, breakdown of intergovernmental negotiations over the distribution of powers, and constitutional reforms more broadly (Guénette et al., 2020).

The province of Québec makes for a little more than a fifth (i.e. 22.5%) of the total Canadian population. It represents the only North American political unit in which francophones are majoritarian (about 72.5% of its roughly 8.5 million members). Since the 1960s or what is known in Québec as the ‘Quiet Revolution’, Quebeckers and their leaders have asked for greater institutional autonomy to consolidate the cultural, legal, and political characteristics that make it a ‘distinct society’ in the Federation. While two referendums on the independence of Québec were organized (in 1980 and 1995) and lost by the ‘sovereigntists’ (by fewer than 55 000 votes the second time), contemporary Québec politics have since taken an ‘identity’ shift.

B. Québec’s distinctiveness, reasonable accommodations and laïcité

Whereas (English) Canadians tend to cherish multiculturalism as one of its distinctive characteristics (Igartua, 2011; Resnick, 1994), civil society in Québec is quite reluctant to embrace it with the same enthusiasm, and successive Québec governments have long viewed it with suspicions (Abu-Laban et al., 2023, p. 4). In a nutshell, this is because the very spirit of the Canadian Multiculturalism Policy (CMP) clashes with Québec’s most cherished desire to be recognized as a distinct national community within the larger Canadian federation—as a host society of its own—whereas the CMP favours the integration of ethnocultural minorities within the (note the singular) Canadian host society (cf. Mathieu, 2022, p. 55). Because it was the governing party when the CMP was first designed and adopted in 1971 and later constitutionalized in 1982, the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) embodies in many ways the political vision associated with Canadian multiculturalism.

On the other hand, one may understand the enactment of Bill 101 or Charter of the French Language (1977) as one of the first pieces of legislation the Québec government passed to counter the normative rationale of the Canadian Multiculturalism Policy and to advance an alternative political vision in the Canadian federation. In doing so, Quebec embarked on a journey of adopting bills that echo what Luc Turgeon et al. (2019) call ‘substantive liberalism’, contrasting with the mainstream vision that predominates in English Canada and that CMP encapsulates, that of a ‘procedural’ form of liberalism. As they summarize it:

Procedural liberalism is associated with a neutral stance by the state on what constitutes the good life, as well as with the precedence of individual rights. Substantive liberalism is not neutral on what constitutes the good life and is willing to restrict some rights in order to promote collective goals. (Turgeon et al., 2019, p. 250)

Since immigration is a shared jurisdiction between both orders of government, this ‘conflict of legitimacies’ (Gagnon, 2021) has led to a series of bilateral intergovernmental administrative agreements between Québec and Ottawa on immigration and diversity management. As such, these agreements constitute a major turning point in the process of institutionalizing interculturalism in Québec.

Interculturalism may be understood as a form of identity policy. It is rooted in the spirit of ‘substantive liberalism’ (Bouchard, 2015; Turgeon et al., 2019). Nonetheless, in the wake of the formal institutionalization of this policy—which process is still ongoing—a series of public debates over the religious neutrality of the State and so-called fundamental values of the Quebec society have amounted to significant tensions between the francophone majority—itself a minority within the Canadian federation—and its internal (religious) minorities.

In the spirit of managing these tensions, the provincial government in Quebec established in 2007 the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, naming Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor as its co-chairs, two of the most distinguished and respected contemporary scholars in La Belle Province. After several months of organized public forums and meetings with experts from all perspectives, Bouchard and Taylor released a report ending with 37 recommendations, most notably the ‘writing of a white paper on laïcité (secularism), which should recommend removing the crucifix behind the chair of the president of the National Assembly’ (Mathieu & Laforest, 2016, p. 389; see also Bouchard & Taylor, 2008, pp. 266–272).

Several pieces of proposed legislation addressing some of these recommendations were introduced by Quebec governments between 2008 and 2014, but none of them became law. Then, during the reign of the Liberal Party from 2014 to 2018, a number of half-measures were passed, leaving both sides dissatisfied. In this context, the Coalition Avenir Québec, a mildly right-wing autonomist political party took over the power for the first time, in 2018, promising to act on this identity debate.

In doing so, on 16 June 2019, the Quebec National Assembly passed Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, which is in line grosso modo with what the Parti Québécois presented when it was governing the province, with its 2014 Bill 60 (Côté & Mathieu, 2016). In a nutshell, Bill 21 affirms four principles: ‘the separation of State and religions, the religious neutrality of the State, the equality of all citizens, and freedom of conscience and freedom of religion’ (Bill 21, Explanatory notes). While these are all political values that are not particularly in line with an exclusivist identity policy towards specific (religious) minorities, the specific means that are meant to implement said policy represents the major points of tension between proponents of Bill 21 and its opponents. In particular, contentions were fuelled by these two segments of the bill, depicted as being discriminatory against specific religious minorities: (A) ‘State laicity requires compliance with the prohibition on wearing religious symbols’ (art. 4) for most public employees (see the whole list in Schedule II of Bill 21); and (B) ‘Personnel members of a [public] body must exercise their functions with their face uncovered. Similarly, persons who present themselves to receive a service from a personnel member of a [public] body must have their face uncovered where doing so is necessary to allow their identity to be verified or for security reasons’ (art. 8).

The reason for that is quite straightforward: these limitations have little to no impact on the dominant group in Quebec—the francophones—whereas they do have an effect on specific religious minority groups (e.g. Muslim women, Sikhs, Jews).² Whereas the Quebec cultural majority was as Catholic as it gets before the ‘Quiet Revolution’ of the 1960s, it has since witnessed a most important secularization process. Nowadays, francophones in Quebec represent the subpopulation in Canada least concerned with religion when reflecting about its core identity markers (Environics, 2019, p. 10). On the contrary, a good deal of newcomers and established religious minorities in the province do believe religion is a major component of their respective ‘selves’ (Maclure & Taylor, 2011). As a consequence, many see Bill 21 as an exclusivist identity policy that requires them to choose between ‘living a good and meaningful life’ and pursuing a career within public administration or even receiving public services. Moreover, critics have argued that Bill 21 was simply unconstitutional, as it would be contrary to the very spirit of Canadian multiculturalism, which is in line with what we described above as ‘procedural liberalism.’

In particular, then, several groups have reached out to the courts to invalidate all or parts of Bill 21 (cf. Droit-inc, 2020). However, it must be noted that, when passing Bill 21, the Québec National Assembly has invoked the Notwithstanding clause (section 33 of the Canadian Constitutional Law, 1982), following which ‘the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act […] of the legislature […] that the Act or provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of the Charter’, for a (renewable) period of five years.

5. Analysis: The Federal Government and the Politics of Substate Identity Policies in Nigeria and Canada

In this section, we provide an analysis of the political dynamics of identity policies in Nigeria and Canada. In line with our analytical framework of actor-centred HI, we focus on the role of political interests of the president and prime minister (chiefs of the executive) in shaping the federal government’s responses to sub-state legislations in both countries. Following this section is a short concluding one.

1. Nigeria and the Politics of Identity Policy

Nigeria’s experience with the Sharia conflict provides an instructive illustration of the interaction between identity policy and politics in a multinational federation. In spite of the divisive nature of the Sharia in a multiethnic and multi-religious country and its entrenchment of hierarchical citizenship (Bolaji, 2010), President Obasnajo was unable to persuade the governors, including his own co-partisans at the substate level, from adopting Sharia. The President merely expressed worries over the adoption of Sharia and wished that the issue would ‘fizzle out’ with time (Mills et al., 2017).

Obasanjo was under strong pressure from both Christians and Muslims, and he was attempting to balance conflicting interests for and against Sharia. His strategy to stay impartial in the face of these conflicting interests was to adopt a ‘passive attitude with the … hope that the issue will resolve itself’ (Human Rights Watch, 2003, p. 6). As he went on to explain:

Muslims in the country were, however, all watching closely to see what I would do. A wrong statement or action could be seen as incendiary, because an ‘infidel’, anti-Muslim president would be seen as trampling on the holy religion of Islam. (Mills et al., 2017, p. 234)

However, at the same time,

Christian clergymen and leaders both within and outside Nigeria were calling on [Obasanjo] to stamp out the new phenomenon of wholesale sharia in states where there was a Muslim majority but with substantial contingents of Christians too. They pointed out that Nigeria is a secular and multi-religious society, and not a Muslim state. (Mills et al., 2017, p. 234)

In navigating this tension, the President’s reticence in confronting the governors was beyond the issue of partisanship but had more to do with the delicate issue of managing the fissiparous religious and regional identities in Nigeria’s fractured multinational federation. As a Christian himself, Obasanjo was not ready to confront these governors, fearing of being branded anti-Islamic (Mills et al., 2017). Rather, the President, in order not to be seen as challenging the regional identities of the predominantly Islamic north, waited and hoped that the Sharia issue would soon fizzle. This shows how deference to ethno-religious differences can compromise the effectiveness of integrative parties by making national leaders not to act decisively as they ought to in order to manage the destabilizing centrifugal forces at the substate level. As Suberu (2009, p. 549) noted, the ‘political salience and combustibility of the Sharia issue in Nigeria’ made it ‘a marker and driver not only of Muslim–Christian conflict, but also of North–South, inter-ethnic, majority–minority and centre–states socio-economic and political competition in the Nigerian federation.’ Obasanjo underscored the dilemma of balancing the competing identity during the Sharia issue when he stated that,

Muslims, who had expected me to kick back against sharia, thereby giving them ammunition to cause mayhem, and Christians, who felt angry and disappointed that I did not roll out military tanks to crush the proponents of sharia, both felt winners and losers at the same time. But Nigeria was surely the unmistakable winner. (Mills et al., 2017, p. 235)

Hence, the president could be said to have shown his sensitivity to the need to maintain national unity in Nigeria's profoundly divided polity, a division that has only grown more pronounced since the return to electoral politics in 1999. This kept him from making any hasty moves that could anger the Muslim north.

On the other hand, we contend that in important ways, the response of President Obasanjo to the Sharia debacle points to the salience of personal political interest and survival. Obasanjo was obviously thinking about the politics of his re-election as politicians would do, and avoided taking any action about the Sharia dispute that could hurt his prospects of being re-elected. We suggest that this may even be the key reason why he did not challenge the move openly or constitutionally dispute the rights of states to impose stringent Sharia codes (Macgregor, 2002) even when Kanu Agabi, the Justice Minister/Attorney General of the Federation, stated in a letter to the governors that the ‘rigid application of Sharia law, with its severe penalties, is an illegal action that threatens the stability, unity, and integrity of the nation’ (BBC News, 2002). In fact, Agabi even asked the 12 state governors implementing Sharia to abolish it, warning that

To proceed on the basis either that the constitution does not exist or that it is irrelevant is to deny the existence of the nation itself. We cannot deny the rule of law and hope to have peace and stability. (The New Humanitarian, 2002)

Rather than stopping the implementation, Governors that adopted Sharia in their States, such as Niger State's Abdulkadir Kure, dared Kanu Agabi to ‘lay the issue before the courts’ if the federal government or the Attorney General of the Federation feels ‘so strongly about the constitutionality of our actions’ (cited in Iwobi, 2004, p. 155). Yet, despite being challenged by the states implementing Sharia to go to court, the federal government did not seek interpretation from the Supreme Court, which would probably have deemed the application of Sharia to criminal cases by state courts unconstitutional and perhaps halted the move early on.

A central part of the president’s strategy for navigating the controversy was downplaying the novelty of the implementation of Sharia by state governors, and, by implication, the problematic impact of this on interethnic-religious relations. He argued that,

To say Sharia must be removed from Islam is like saying that the 10 commandments must be removed from Christianity […]. Sharia is not a new thing and it's not a thing to be afraid of. What we need is justice. (Macgregor, 2002)

He then concluded that because Sharia has been practiced in some states in the north since time immemorial, the rights of these states to use it would not be disputed by the federal government (Macgregor, 2002). While Obasanjo was right in arguing that Sharia law has been in the north before 1999, neither was it imposed as state religion as the governors did with the return to civil rule in 1999 nor was its application extended to criminal law per se. Obasanjo, a former military head of state, therefore, could not be oblivious of this difference. Indeed, as he explained later (Mills et al., 2017, p. 233):

Sharia has always been part of the legal and judicial system in the north, but only at the customary, or so-called magisterial level. Even then, the Nigerian Constitution has provision for establishing a Sharia Court of Appeal if the need ever arises. Sharia was, therefore, never an issue because it dealt with personal issues such as marriage, inheritance, and minor and civil issues, such as debt, boundary disputes and land matters.

This point highlights the fact that his cautious approach to the Sharia controversy, especially his refusal to seek judicial interpretation was not because of his belief in the correctness of the governors’ decisions, which he himself described as designed ‘for self-serving and self-preservation reasons, not for genuine or authentic religious conviction’ (Mills et al., 2017, p. 234). Rather, it should also be taken as a deft strategy to dampen religion tension by not interfering to stop an identity policy instituted in the Muslim-dominated region whose political elites had already accused him of marginalizing them in the federal government’s appointments despite significant electoral support the region gave him that made him win the 1999 presidential election.

Undoubtedly, the president cannot be solely held accountable for his failure to persuade the six governors affiliated with his own party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP), to renounce their intentions of instituting Sharia law at the state level. This is because, these governors were under pressure from Islamic civil society to declare Sharia, and the opposition All People’s Party (APP, later All Nigerian People’s Party, ANPP) in these states had already begun campaigning for the 2003 election on the promise of establishing full-fledged Sharia in the PDP states where sharia had not been declared or where implementation was deemed inadequate. Despite the fact that some PDP leaders were not ardent supporters of Sharia at first, they caved into pressure from Muslim civil society and the opposition APP in these states. The APP had seized on Sharia's mass popularity and used it to legitimize the party's political ambitions (Kendhammer, 2013, 2016).

In addition, the move allowed governors who supported Sharia to capitalize on the popular portrayal of Sharia in the largely Muslim north as a means of protecting Islamic rights, social justice, and development (Kendhammer, 2013). The use of ethnic and religious identities as legitimation tools for political power created incentives for these governors to sidestep stability-prone federal bargaining through the incentives that federal-state co-partisanship provides in favour of disruptive federal outcomes.

In the case of Kano's decision to adopt Sharia, Governor Kwankwaso, also elected under the banner of the PDP, rejected Obasanjo's veiled threat of federal government intervention if he did not abandon the implementation of Sharia before the 2003 general election (BBC News, 2000). Governor Kwankwaso, who had previously expressed reservations about adopting Sharia but eventually succumbed to strong pressure from Kano's Islamic civil society (Kendhammer, 2016), was reported to have responded that he would not rescind his decision to implement Sharia as President Obasanjo had asked, arguing that ‘Sharia is in the interest of the state and Nigeria,’ and that ‘Sharia is irreversible, and we are unwilling to give up our fundamental rights to anyone’ (BBC News, 2000).

Nonetheless, we contend that, despite state-level political dynamics and electoral considerations that made Sharia adoption appealing to the governors, and which President Obasanjo cannot really affect, his own re-election strategy also played a significant role in how he reacted to the Sharia dispute. It was not lost on Obasanjo that he won election as president in 1999 ‘in large part through the support of the north’ (Human Rights Watch, 2003, p. 6). Indeed, he had failed to secure electoral support from his own southwest region, where the opposition party, Alliance for Democracy (AD), dominated and even defeated the PDP in Obasanjo’s own electoral ward during the presidential election. Thus, it was politically unwise for him to confront the state governors on his own party label in an effort to prevent them from adopting Sharia, as doing so would have further alienated not only these copartisans who are important allies during federal election but the entire Muslim north, which is an important political region for the PDP. The Human Rights Watch noted the role of self interest in Obasanjo’s cautious approach:

in the period leading up to elections in 2003, the federal government would have been especially reluctant to take a strong stand against Sharia for fear of alienating the northern vote. Several of the northern state governors have staked their personal and political reputation on the successful implementation of Sharia. (Human Rights Watch, 2003, p. 6)

To expatiate, in the general election of 1999, the PDP, Obasanjo’s party, won 21 governorship slots, while the APP and the AD won nine and six slots, respectively. The PDP’s victory in the governorship elections was spread throughout Nigeria’s six informal geographical zones, except for Obasanjo’s home base of the southwest, where the President’s party did not win any slots. Both the opposition AD and APP were confined to their regional bases, with the AD winning all the governorship slots in the southwest—Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ondo, and Ekiti—while the APP won just nine out of the nineteen northern states, with seven of these—Zamfara, Yobe, Sokoto, Jigawa, Kebbi, Gombe, and Bornu—being the Sharia-implementing states.

However, the result of the governorship elections does not reflect the full extent of the PDP’s dominance in the 1999 election. While the party lost 9 governorship slots to the APP in that election, in the presidential election conducted on 27 February 1999, for which the ‘regionalist’ parties—the AD and the APP—formed an alliance to present a strong force against the PDP, the PDP won 6 of the 9 states in the northern states that enacted Sharia legislation compared to 3 states for the AD-APP alliance—Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. The AD-APP alliance, however, convincingly won all 6 states in the southwest region, whereas the PDP (Obasanjo’s party) only managed to secure over 25% of the votes in merely two out of the six states within the region (Adebanwi, 2014) (Table 1).

Table 1. Obasanjo’s electoral support in the southwest, 1999

State	PDP (Obasanjo) vote %
Ekiti	26
Lagos	11
Ondo	15
Ogun	30
Osun	23
Oyo	24

Source: Adebanwi (2014, p. 209).

These dynamics—the PDP’s shaky electoral support in the President’s own home region of the southwest, and its substantial support in the north—was not lost on President Obasanjo. The desire not to isolate the PDP’s strong electoral base in the north, therefore, must have informed also his disposition to tread cautiously on the Sharia issue. Obasanjo was conscious that, despite not being supported in his own region, he got overwhelming support from northern leaders, which added to his electoral victory in 1999. At the time of the Sharia crisis, the same elites were already complaining about being politically side-lined in federal positions, so any hasty decisions regarding Sharia law would have further estranged the ruling party from the region.

President Obasanjo cannot be faulted for prioritizing his reelection, a common practice among politicians, as he attempts to manage the Sharia controversy. However, it is important to emphasize that his unwillingness to contest the case in a court of law resulted in the country being deprived of the advantages of judicial settlement of intergovernmental disputes, which, as Bednar (2004) argues, can effectively address issues related to opportunistic behaviour by federal and state governments, and also serves as a crucial safeguard for federalism. The president's cautionary approach, though, may have helped to avoid contentious lawsuits and confrontation between federal and state governments over the Sharia issue if the matter had gone to court. However, the short- and long-term consequences were restrictions on the religious freedom of minority non-Muslim communities living in states that imposed ‘full Sharia,’ as well as minority groups within Islam (including women and the poor), such as Buba Jangebe, whose hands were amputated following his conviction by a Sharia court in Zamfara state for stealing a cow in 2000. It also led to an escalation of intergroup (violent) conflicts, particularly in Kaduna state, which is home to a large Christian population.

2. Canada and the Politics of Identity Policy

When the ‘reasonable accommodation crisis’ erupted in 2006–2008, Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister of Canada. Harper’s conservatives governed between 2006 and 2015. After holding on to fragile minority governments under the Canadian parliamentary system in 2006–2008 and then again 2008–2011, the Conservative Party of Canada won a majority of seats in the House of Commons as a result of the 2011 general election.

Even though Stephen Harper did not quite get the electoral support he aspired to in Québec during his tenure, his understanding of how Canadian federalism should work was meant to be appealing to Québec's preferred stance for ‘substantive’ form of liberalism, as it requests greater autonomy and recognition of their community forming a ‘société distincte.’ In a nutshell, one may summarize Harper’s political philosophy by echoing what he coined as an ‘open federalism’, which refers to four key principles:

1. Put an end to the severe fiscal imbalance that exists between governments’ revenues and fields of jurisdiction and augment provincial accountability;

2. Respect exclusive provincial jurisdictions;

3. Limit Ottawa’s spending power in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdictions; and finally,

4. Recognize a role for Québec within international forums starting with a Quebec presence within the Canadian delegation at UNESCO (see Caron & Laforest, 2009).

Therefore, while the governing Parti Québécois in Québec first presented its ‘Charter of Values’ or Bill 60 in 2014, Harper did his best not to intervene or comment regarding the ongoing legislative process in the province, so to respect his promises of ‘open federalism’. Even though there are multiple factors that should be taken into account, such as the fact that he had been at the head of the Canadian federal executive for nearly a decade, his (in)action in the midst of this divisive debate in Québec and Canada more broadly contributed to his party losing control of the Parliament after the 2015 general election.

In replacement of Stephen Harper’s discourse of ‘open federalism’, Canada was now to be governed by Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada (2015–2019). In marked contrast to Stephen Harper’s approach, Justin Trudeau used every occasion he had to stress the importance of celebrating and cherishing diversity, which he presented as ‘Canada’s strength’ in one of his very first addresses as Prime Minister of Canada (Canada, 2015).

For the most part that he was in power with a majority government (2015–2019), Justin Trudeau was not challenged by the Philippe Couillard’s (Liberal Party of Québec) government (2014–2018). Despite Québec's 2017 introduction of the ‘Quebecers: Our Way of Being Canadians’ Policy on Québec Affirmation and Canadian Relations, relations between the two orders of government were generally positive and ideologically compatible. Indeed, both Trudeau and Couillard can be described as proponents of a ‘procedural’ form of liberalism that emphasizes the primacy of individual rights over collective objectives and believes that the state should remain neutral in determining what constitutes a ‘good life.’

This changed dramatically in 2018, when a new nationalist and right-wing party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, led by François Legault, a former cabinet minister under the banner of the Parti Québécois, took control in La Belle Province, significantly altering the political climate. During the provincial general election of 2018, François Legault invested a great deal of his political capital into the promotion and defence of the Québec nation’s alleged ‘common values’. In doing so, he promised that, if elected, he would act promptly to adopt a new Bill that would ensure the religious neutrality of the State, therefore implementing a French-inspired version of laïcité (secularism). Right after he was elected with a comfortable majority, he passed Bill 21 An Act Respecting the Laïcity of the State. This was only a few months before the next federal general election, to be held on 21 October 2019.

Under these circumstances, where a solid majority of Quebeckers were in favour of Bill 21 and Trudeau seeking re-election and support in Québec’s numerous federal electoral districts (78 out of 338), the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) had to make a choice between ideological coherence—thus denouncing vigorously Bill 21—and electoral pragmatism. Ideologically, the LPC's clear preference for ‘procedural liberalism’ (represented here by Canada's multiculturalism policy) over its ‘substantive’ form (represented here by the content of Bill 21) would have required their leader to devote a great deal of effort to fighting tooth and nail against this piece of legislation. However, as demonstrated by Richard Johnston (2017, p. 63), most of the time when the LPC was able to form the federal government since the beginning of the twentieth century, it is because it was able to secure at least 20% of the overall seats in the House of Commons from Quebec’s electoral districts alone. Even if today’s electorate in Quebec is more volatile than it used to be, it seems difficult to convince liberal leaders not to court voters from La Belle Province. Ultimately, then, a compromise prevailed.

During the 2019 election campaign, Justin Trudeau decided to play on both sides and declared that a free society as Canada should not be ‘limiting fundamental rights or allowing discrimination to happen’, therefore judging negatively Bill 21, but nonetheless added that ‘a Liberal government would not get involved in a legal challenge to the legislation [Bill 61]’ (cited in Wright, 2019). We argue that this strategy was used specifically in order to avoid offending many Québec voters (mostly in line with a substantive form of liberalism), while also upholding some level of ideological coherence towards the LPC's partisan base, on the one hand, and the Canadian electorate, on the other (mostly in line with a procedural form of liberalism).

This ambiguity did not appear to be convincing for a majority of the electorate in Québec, as a fair share of Quebeckers rather decided to vote for the Bloc Québécois, which came back from the ashes by controlling 32 seats in Parliament (compared to only 10 after the 2015 general election). For its part, the Bloc Québécois centred its campaign largely on positioning itself as the representative of Quebeckers in Ottawa who can be relied upon to uphold the ‘policy consensus’ that results from the National Assembly of Québec, most especially its position on Bill 21.

The Coalition Avenir Québec has since introduced another identity policy, Bill 96 An Act Respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Québec. In a nutshell, Bill 96 aims at modernizing Bill 101 (1977), commonly known as the Québec Charter of the French language. That being said, the government of Québec indicated that its intention with this bill is not limited to modernizing Bill 101; it was also intended to amend the Canadian constitutional order by utilizing Section 45 of the Canadian Constitution, which provides that ‘the legislature of each province may exclusively make laws amending the constitution of the province’. As such, the Québec government was able to do indirectly what was denied to La Belle Province with the Meech Lake (1990) and Charlottetown (1992) failed accords, that is adding a constitutional provision recognizing that ‘Québec forms a distinct nation’.

Another federal election was conducted in September 2021. Since Justin Trudeau was now at the head of a minority government (2019–2021), in search of popular support in Québec to win back the seats that he lost to the Bloc Québécois in 2019, the Prime Minister decided to tacitly accept Québec’s legitimacy to implement its identity policy (Montpetit, 2021). Over the long haul, this is a spectacular ideological U-turn for the Liberal Party of Canada. Even though other factors might need to be considered, we contend that the most promising explanation of this, is that Justin Trudeau decided that ideological flexibility was required for him to get re-elected.

In this context, Erin O'Toole, then leader of the Conservative Party, which was also attempting to gain more seats in Québec with the 2021 federal general election, had stated that he would not challenge Bill 21 or Bill 96 in court if elected. Only the NDP, whose prospects of gaining more than a few seats in Québec after the 2021 federal elections were, to put it mildly, slim, maintains its position that Bills 21 and 96 should be abolished altogether because they appear to be discriminatory to different minorities in Québec society. The NDP could thus afford not to make any allies in Québec. The other major parties, whose prospects of establishing a minority or majority government depended on Quebeckers’ support, could not afford this luxury and therefore chose not to fight back explicitly. The results of the federal elections in 2021 were very similar to those of 2019: the LPC could form another minority government. However, neither the Liberal Party of Canada nor the Conservative Party of Canada were able to strip the Bloc Québécois, the only ‘federal’ party openly supporting Québec's bills rooted in ‘substantive liberalism,’ of its share of MPs from Québec.

In light of recent debates regarding the adoption of identity policies in Québec that appear for a significant portion of the Canadian population outside Québec to be discriminatory, we shall conclude that electoral pragmatism and the incentive to get (re-)elected and supported by the electorate in La Belle Province, have won the day over ideological purity, at least when it comes to the governing Liberal Party of Canada. Of course, this may change over the next few years as numerous public figures, including Gérard Bouchard (2022), have criticized the Québec government for excessively encroaching on minority rights in their efforts to protect the cultural majority and achieve collective objectives. Similarly, the LPC of Canada will modify its narrative based on what the Conservative Party of Canada decides to put forward, given that it elected Mr. Pierre Poilievre as their new leader in 2022, a political actor that is aligned with the far-right.

Conclusion

What factors shape the federal chiefs of the executive’s responses to substate identity policies within deeply diverse federal systems? In this paper, we attempted to answer this question by examining two dissimilar multinational federal systems, that is contemporary Nigeria and Canada. We analysed the role of the head of the executive branch of government (President or Prime Minister) as (self) proclaimed bearers of national unity when confronted with (exclusivist) identity policies that may threaten the inclusion of all citizens. Focusing on the tension over secularism and the place of the Muslim veil in Québec public institutions, and the adoption of Sharia by twelve Muslim-majority states in Nigeria’s northern region, we showed that while respect for the specific culture of the Muslim-dominated states in Nigeria and Francophone province in Canada could explain the federal government’s responses to the identity policies implemented in these regions, the primary driver of the responses was the president and prime minister’s political goal of re-election and retaining power.

While the democratic opening in Nigeria following years of military rule led to the emergence and empowerment of governors as new political actors in the country, this also led to the expansion of Sharia in some 12 northern states. As a consequence, this constrained President Obasanjo, who had his mind on getting re-elected, from openly opposing sharia. Similarly, the quest for re-election decisively affected both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau’s responses to Quebec’s intercultural and secularism policies. Seen from this perspective, we contend that while institutions clearly shape actors’ interests and strategies, these strategies are also influenced by the broader context within which institutions are embedded and operate at a particular time.

By stressing this phenomenon, this paper highlights that while institutions—in this case, federal institutions and associated ideas and policies—no doubt matter in delimiting the arena for conflict over and management of diversity in multinational democracies such as Nigeria and Canada, the quest for electoral gains and ensuing politicization of identity policies by political actors which unfolds within these institutional boundaries and broader institutional context is the most important variable to consider. The Canadian and Nigerian cases illustrate how politicians in Quebec and the 12 northern states in Nigeria that implemented strict Sharia circumvented the federal constitution to implement their visions of identity policy by using substate laws. In the end, we believe this article opens the door to a promising hypothesis for explaining the actions and inactions of executive branch chiefs in other complex federal systems, from Belgium and Spain to Bosnia–Herzegovina and Ethiopia or India, when confronted with identity policies by majoritarian substate governments that minority groups view as exclusivist and fear will erode their freedom and rights. Further comparative studies are required to assess the overall analytical merit of the argument offered in this article in other federations. For example, it would be beneficial to critically evaluate the role of important actors beyond governmental elites, such as civil society and political parties, in influencing the formulation and articulation of identity policies and the responses to these policies, as well as the different and similar mechanisms through which identity policy articulations / implementations and responses to them take place within the specific federal institutional rules and historical context.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Eyene Okpanachi's research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 895779.

Notes on contributors

Eyene Okpanachi

Eyene Okpanachi is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of South Wales, UK. He was previously a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (comparative politics and international relations) from the University of Alberta, where he was also a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar. His research encompasses a wide range of topics, including federalism and multilevel governance, migration and mobility, conflict processes, the management of ethno-religious identities, energy transition, climate change and natural resource policy and politics in Africa and Canada.

Félix Mathieu

Félix Mathieu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Winnipeg and co-editor (French-speaking section) of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. His work focuses on the theory and practice of federalism, nationalism, the management of diversity, and constitutional politics in Canada and in a comparative perspective.

Notes

1 Of course, there exist other conceptions of federalism but space will not allow for elaboration. See, for example, Riker (1964), Elazar (1987).

2 For instance, as of December 2021, a hijab-wearing Muslim schoolteacher working for the Western School Board of the province of Québec was reassigned to administrative tasks in compliance with Bill 21.