c. 2004 Religion News Service

KANO, Nigeria _ Nafisat Usmaan draws a thick line under the word “sexuality,” scrawled in felt-tipped marker on a pink flip chart.

“Should you talk to your parents about this?” she asks some two dozen teenage students, slouched in plastic chairs before her. Dead silence. “What about your family doctor?”

“What about my girlfriend?” shoots back one young man. The class chuckles.

The discussion at the Kano-based Adolescent Health and Information Project would seem unremarkable in any U.S. biology class.

Only it is taking place in conservative northern Nigeria, where a dozen states have adopted a particularly strict interpretation of Islam’s Sharia law. And where a sex-education class, led by a young woman in a yellow gown and matching head scarf, would once have seemed taboo.

North in Katsina state, a religious appeals court in September acquitted 32-year-old Amina Lawal, facing death by stoning for adultery. But two other women face similar charges. South in Kaduna state, memories linger of 2002 religious riots against a Miss World contest.

And in Kano, which adopted Sharia law four years ago, Muslim leaders have launched a campaign against polio vaccinations, for allegedly making women infertile.

But a recent weeklong trip from Nigeria’s spare north to its lush and humid south revealed a tangle of paradoxes surrounding sexual and social mores in Africa’s most populous country _ particularly when it comes to women’s rights.

In southwestern Nigeria, ethnic Yoruba women have long been traders and business owners. Southeast, the sleepy, river city of Calabar is dominated by the Efiks, a matrilineal group that traces descendancy through females.

Yet the same problems _ from unsafe abortions and early marriages, to bride prices and wife beating _ can be found in Nigeria’s largely Christian south as in its majority Muslim north. Indeed, female circumcision is far more widespread in the south than in the north.

True, northern feminists complain of discrimination their southern counterparts never face: religious courts that assign lesser weight to women’s testimony; Sharia governments that have barred female passengers from public buses; Muslim leaders who impose puritanical sexual codes.

Yet behind the veil of morality lies commonplace reality. Adultery, prostitution and premarital sex are practiced in Islamic strongholds like Kano, albeit less often than in the south.

“Casual sex happens a lot,” said Bisi Tugbobo, a reproductive health specialist at Pathfinder International, a nonprofit organization in Lagos. “Even in Sharia states.”

And even in Sharia states, women sit on state councils, and climb the corporate ladder.

“Women have more rights here than people think,” said Amina Ladan Baki Mohammed, a bank manager in Kano and a senior member of Baobab, a national women’s rights group that assisted Amina Lawal. “Women trade and go to school here. There are many who are doctors, lawyers, bankers.”

Hajira Mairo Bello, a Muslim who runs the Adolescent Health and Information Project in Kano, agrees times have changed from just two decades ago.

“Girls used to think marriage was the end of the story,” she said. “Not anymore. They’re realizing they must fight for themselves. That they should be valued as human beings.”

Now 51, Bello left a banking career 15 years ago to launch the youth program, which offers sexual education, health services and vocational training programs to both men and women.

At one Kano tailoring class run by Bello’s group, beaming instructor Uwani Yahaya promised a bright future for her students, most of them unmarried women or young widows. There are only about a dozen sewing machines for the center’s 55 students, but Yahaya’s calculations are simple. Good tailors in Kano are hard to find. With financial independence comes empowerment.

“Thanks be to almighty Allah, they are doing very well,” said Yahaya, wearing a flowered head scarf and speaking in Hausa, as her students sat bashfully behind their machines. “They are learning to run a very profitable business.”

But not everybody is sold on Bello’s programs. Two years ago, Kano authorities temporarily banned her adolescent sexuality lessons in public schools.

“Talking about sexuality and reproductive health doesn’t go down well with any government,” Bello admitted wryly. “This isn’t about Sharia law. It’s just politics wrapped in the cloth of religion.”

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Nigeria’s fitful progress toward greater women’s empowerment mirrors countries elsewhere in Africa.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who traditionally taps women for top cabinet jobs, stirred debate last year when he announced a woman should succeed him as president _ when he eventually steps down.

Leaders in Senegal and Sao Tome & Principle have appointed female prime ministers. And Uganda’s first female vice president, Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe, stepped down only last May, after nine years on the job. Tellingly however, Kazibwe announced she was divorcing her husband in 2002, for allegedly beating her.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

In Nigeria, half a dozen women are members of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cabinet. But the country is far from meeting its goal of 30 percent female representation on state and local governments.

So far thousands of Nigerian adolescents have gone through the Girls’ Power program, run in private centers and public schools in four Nigerian states.

Instructors tick off instances in which their graduates have begun speaking out in their communities against wife battery and female circumcision.

“We take girls who are groping with their self-identity,” said Bene Madunagu, who heads Girls’ Power. “We tell them they have the capacity to succeed. Then those girls will grow up empowered. And their children will be empowered.”

And at recent afternoon session in Calabar, students like 21-year-old Uduak ‘Nta talked about pursuing the careers their mothers might have only dreamed about.

“I’d like to be a physician,” said ‘Nta, a poised and articulate medical microbiology student who attends the University of Calabar. “But if I can’t get into medical school, I’d like to work in public health. Something that serves humanity.”

Members of the group say they face some hostility for being part of Girls’ Power, especially from boys. “I say what I think, and guys don’t like that,” said Grace Edet, 14. “They say Girls’ Power has spoiled me. That I’m not the same person I once was.”

But Grace’s 71-year-old father is not among the critics.

“She likes the program,” said the Rev. Osory Edet, a diminutive Methodist minister. “So I am happy.”

He fell silent for a moment, then smiled.

“Grace tells me she wants to be a journalist,” Edet added. “I was shocked. It’s a difficult profession for a women to make headway. But she insisted. So I gave her my blessing.”

DEA/PH END BRYANT