Nigerian town puts stricter Islamic limits on women

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Nigerian town puts stricter Islamic limits on women

By Craig Timberg

THE WASHINGTON POST


KANO, Nigeria - For women, commuting across this ancient Islamic city has long been as easy as hopping into a minibus or climbing on the back of a motorcycle taxi. Both are cheap and readily available.

Even if some female passengers found it unsettling to be so near strange men, who might make lewd comments or press their bodies close, such was the price of efficient transport.

But the days of casual travel are ending for the women of Kano, a bustling trading center of 500,000 in northern Nigeria.

Government officials, determined to halt what they see as the decline of public morality, are banning women from all but a handful of Kano's motorcycle taxis and are requiring them to sit in the back of public minibuses.

It is the next step, officials said, in an effort to bring the strict Islamic legal code of sharia to Kano, in one of 12 states in northern Nigeria where Islamic law holds sway to varying degrees. The other 24 states, and the federal capital, Abuja, have a mix of religions and are governed by secular laws.

Since 2000, authorities across northern Nigeria have sought to re-establish traditional sharia rules disrupted during the 20th century by British colonialism and post-colonial political struggles, including floggings for drinking alcohol, amputations of hands for stealing and death by stoning for adultery.

The harshest of these penalties have rarely been carried out, but a broader campaign toward regulating behavior -- especially between men and women -- has taken hold.

Underlying the move toward sharia is a growing concern that life is changing too fast in Kano. Traders hawk DVDs of often-lewd Hollywood movies. Residents who can afford satellite television can get an eyeful of dancing, scantily dressed women. And some young women are choosing not to wear the traditional head coverings or long, loosely fitting robes preferred by their elders.

The new transit strategy, for which the government has bought a small fleet of gender-restricted vehicles, has met initially with widespread approval. Men say that the virtue of women is better protected. Women say the new minibuses are more comfortable and private without the potentially amorous behavior of men.

Zabbaatu Auwal, a woman carrying her son, 2, boarded one of the new minibuses, emblazoned with the words "A Daidaita Sahu," or "Be Orderly," in Hausa, one of the four most widely used local languages beside English. Taking a seat in the back row, she praised the new system.

"I don't have to mix with men, which is a source of discomfort to us," she said.