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In 1988, the World Health Assembly voted to eradicate poliomyelitis by 2000. While cases of wild poliovirus worldwide have declined considerably, cases continue to be reported, mainly in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. This chapter uses anthropological research methods to examine changes in the reception and implementation of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Zaria, Kaduna State, in Northern Nigeria in order to address the question of why polio cases persist in this area. It also considers how changes the GPEI program in Nigeria, specifically broader community involvement and the introduction of health incentives teams, affected its reception and raises the larger question of how such global public health initiatives might be appropriately framed in the future.

This chapter follows Norman Anderson’s attempts to foster legal reform in Northern Nigeria in the late 1950s by criticizing indirect rule and appealing to reforms associated with the Arab world. Despite his criticism of imperialism, Anderson developed contacts in Britain’s Colonial Office and utilized British imperial networks to attempt to spread reform strategies popularized by scholars in Egypt to countries emerging out of formal British imperial rule. Anderson was particularly concerned about restricting traditional approaches to criminal law in Northern Nigeria and justifying this restriction on grounds popularized by Arab thinkers that seemed to find wide support amongst Muslims.

This chapter introduces northern Nigeria as the regional context for the emergence of both Sufi- and Salafi-oriented movements of reform. It shows again that neither movement of reform was monolithic but characterized by multiple splits. The chapter presents Abubakar Gumi as the first major representative of Salafi-minded reform in northern Nigeria and discusses the emergence of the ‘Yan Izala as the first Salafi-oriented movement of reform that also became a popular mass movement. Due to its conservative political positions, the ‘Yan Izala movement was challenged by more radical movements such as the “Islamic Movement” led by Ibrahim al-Zakzaki. Some radical movements eventually advocated jihad as in the case of the Boko Haram movement. Some ‘Yan Izala fractions, representing a second generation of Salafi-minded reformers, came to form the ahl al-sunna movement of reform which played a major role in the implementation of “political shariÝa” in the 2000s. The chapter finally compares the development of Salafi-oriented reform in northern Nigeria with developments in neighbouring Niger and shows that the failure of Salafi-minded reform in Niger was again linked with the different historical and social context.

This chapter is an ethnography of Eltantawi’s research in Northern Nigeria conducted in 2010. It describes and analyzes her conversations with key players in Amina Lawal’s trial. These conversations illuminate how central the Islamic identity is in Northern Nigeria, and critically examines what “Islam” actually signifies for Northern Nigerians, highlighting how difficult it is to campaign for any kind of change outside the framework of “Islam.” Other interviews highlight the sense of rampant material and moral corruption in Nigeria. The chapter also introduces the distinction between “idealized” and “political” shari’ah, and shows how the heavy handedness and corruption of the current sharia experiment is labeled “political” in order to preserve the sense of Islam as an ideal.

This chapter provides a history of the rise of Islam in west Africa, in particular to Hausaland, which is today’s Northern Nigeria. The chapter then concentrates on the Sokoto Jihad and subsequent caliphate led by Uthman Dan Fodio. The chapter traces his intellectual history, highlighting his engagement with the Arabian peninsula and championing of unifying the Hausaland region under the textual regimen of the Maliki school of Islamic law. The second layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the role the Sokoto jihad plays in contemporary northern Nigerian idealizations of an ideal Islamic society, is explained. Idealization of scholars and hudud punishments are shown to be reinscribed into Nigeria’s present moment as a source of authentication of the 1999 sharia experiment.

Eltantawi became interested in the case of Amina Lawal in 2002 when she was working in Washington DC in media and communications after the 9-11 attacks and was inundated with media phone calls about Lawal’s trial. This chapter introduces the book’s themes and lays out its guiding framework, the “sunnaic paradigm”: the concerns of Nigeria’s present, read back into the nineteenth century Sokoto Caliphate, which is then read back into the classical, Prophetic period of Islam. The sunnaic paradigm gave a sense of power to Nigerians as they embarked on the 1999 shar’ia experiment to overcome their societies’ significant challenges. The book wrestles throughout with how the seventh century past (birth of Islam) affects the twenty-first century present (demanding shar’ia).