The Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) views with grave alarm and unreserved condemnation the judgment delivered on Friday by a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, Ibadan Division, which, by a split decision of two to one, set aside the 22 May 2024 judgment of the Oyo State High Court that had upheld the right of eleven Muslim female students of the International School, University of Ibadan (ISI), to wear the hijab as part of their school uniform. We state without equivocation that this judgment is not a neutral resolution of a dress-code dispute. It is a direct assault on the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion of Muslim children, and a troubling retreat from the settled trajectory of Nigerian jurisprudence on this question.
THE FACTS OF THE CASE
• The dispute traces back to 2018, when the management of ISI banned Muslim female students from wearing the hijab with their school uniform, in defiance of the students’ religious obligations and identity.
• Eleven Muslim female students, supported by the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), approached the Oyo State High Court to challenge the ban as an infringement of their fundamental rights to freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination.
• On 22 May 2024, Justice Moshood Ishola of the Oyo State High Court, Ibadan, ruled in favour of the students, holding that the prohibition of the hijab violated their constitutional rights.
• ISI’s management thereafter pursued an appeal, and on Thursday, 3 July 2026, the Court of Appeal, Ibadan, delivered a split verdict after seven years of litigation. The majority- Justice Biobele Georgewill, with Justice K.I. Amadi concurring- set aside the High Court’s judgment, holding that ISI is a private school because it does not receive government subventions, and that the earlier Supreme Court authority on hijab use applies only to publicly funded schools.
The majority further held that religious freedom is a personal right capable of being waived, and that the students had waived that right by signing the school’s code of conduct on admission, such that no infringement of their rights was found on the hijab question.
• Justice Fadawu Umar, in a dissenting judgment, held that the appeal lacked merit and ought to have been dismissed, upholding the students’ right to the hijab as recognised by the trial court.
• Notably, on a related issue in the same judgment, the Court of Appeal found that the school’s conduct in locking the affected students in the library for three to four hours was indeed a violation of their rights, though it reduced the damages earlier awarded by the trial court from one million naira to two hundred thousand naira.
MPAC holds that the majority decision is legally unsound, socially dangerous, and fundamentally incompatible with the letter and spirit of Section 38 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), which guarantees every citizen the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to manifest and practise that religion. This right does not diminish because a citizen is a minor, and it does not evaporate at the gates of a school, whether public or private.
The majority’s finding that ISI is a private school turns on the narrow fact that it does not receive government subventions. MPAC rejects this as a bookkeeping test masquerading as constitutional analysis. Section 38 of the Constitution does not qualify its protection by an institution’s funding structure, and a child’s right to religious freedom cannot rationally depend on whether a subvention cheque changes hands.
ISI is, in every material respect, a school established and administered under the auspices of the University of Ibadan, a Federal Government-owned institution, operating on public land under public academic supervision.
To hinge the entirety of these students’ constitutional protection on a subvention technicality is to let form triumph over substance, and it hands every private and faith-affiliated school in Nigeria a ready-made template for discriminating against Muslim students with impunity.
Also, the judgment contradicts itself: The same panel that found no infringement of the students’ religious rights nonetheless upheld the trial court’s finding that confining these students to a library for three to four hours was a violation of their rights, merely reducing the damages awarded from one million naira to two hundred thousand naira.
MPAC finds it impossible to reconcile a judgment that recognises the wrongfulness of punitively detaining Muslim students over their hijab, while simultaneously ruling that stripping them of the right to wear that same hijab is no violation at all. This internal contradiction exposes the fragility of the majority’s reasoning and strengthens the case for appellate review by the Supreme Court.
The dangerous ‘waiver’ doctrine: The majority’s reasoning that a child, or her guardians, ‘waived’ her constitutional right to religious practice by signing an admission undertaking is a doctrine of profound and far-reaching danger.
Fundamental rights exist precisely to protect the individual from being made to trade away their dignity as the price of access to education, employment or public services. If this reasoning stands, no institutional rule, however discriminatory, could ever be challenged, since accepting admission would always be recast as a ‘waiver.’ This inverts the entire architecture of constitutional rights protection in Nigeria.
Disregard for established precedent: The Nigerian judiciary has already spoken decisively on this question. In Lagos State Government & Ors v. Asiyat AbdulKareem & Ors (SC/910/2016), the Supreme Court of Nigeria affirmed the right of Muslim female students to wear the hijab as an inseparable component of their constitutionally protected religious practice.
That judgment was a landmark vindication of the rights of the Muslim child in the Nigerian education system. To now construct an artificial fence around that precedent, confining it only to state-owned schools, is to hollow out its protective force and invite a proliferation of discriminatory dress codes across private and mission-affiliated schools nationwide.
A troubling pattern of marginalisation: This judgment does not occur in isolation. It follows a familiar and troubling pattern in which the religious rights, institutional access and public standing of Muslims in Nigeria are subjected to a stricter and more grudging standard than is applied to other faith communities. MPAC will not stay silent while the courts, whose duty is to be the last hope of the citizen, become instead an instrument for eroding that hope.
MPAC commends the courage and clarity of Justice Fadawu Umar’s dissenting judgment, which correctly recognised that the appeal lacked merit and that the constitutional rights of the affected students remained intact. We align ourselves fully with that minority position. We also commend the ISI Muslim Parents Forum (ISIMPF), under the chairmanship of Abdur-Rahman Balogun, for its composed and dignified response in the face of what it has rightly described as an injustice, and for its stated resolve to pursue this matter to the Supreme Court. We further commend the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) for its swift action in filing, on the very day of the judgment, a Notice of Appeal together with a Motion for Stay of Execution and Injunction pending appeal. MPAC stands fully behind both bodies, and we make the following demands:
• We urge the Court of Appeal to expeditiously hear and grant MURIC’s Motion for Stay of Execution/Injunction, so that, consistent with its legal effect, ISI remains barred from preventing Muslim students from wearing the hijab pending the final determination of the appeal. We advise all affected students and parents to remain calm and steadfast while this process runs its course.
• We pledge MPAC’s full advocacy, strategic communications and mobilisation support to ISIMPF, MURIC and the eleven affected students as this matter proceeds to the Supreme Court of Nigeria for final and just resolution.
• We call on the National Assembly to close the loophole this judgment has exposed by enacting clear legislation affirming that the constitutional right to religious freedom, including the right to religious dress, applies uniformly across all schools in Nigeria, whether publicly or privately owned, and regardless of whether they receive government subventions.
• We call on the Federal Ministry of Education and state universal basic education boards and ministries to issue clear regulatory guidance affirming that no school, public or private, may adopt uniform or dress-code policies that discriminate against students on the basis of religion.
• We call on the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWEN), Muslim professional bodies, civil society organisations, and all persons of conscience, irrespective of faith, to speak out against a judgment that sets a precedent capable of being weaponised against any minority religious community in Nigeria tomorrow.
• We put the management of the University of Ibadan and ISI (and others that continue to violate the Constitutional rights of Muslim citizens in schools) on notice that MPAC and its coalition partners will pursue every lawful and legitimate avenue, including public mobilisation, to ensure that no Muslim child in Nigeria is made to choose between her faith and her education.
Religious freedom is not a privilege to be rationed by the ownership structure of an institution, nor a right that a child can be made to sign away as a condition of enrolment. MPAC insists that the hijab is neither a threat to discipline nor a matter of institutional preference; it is a fundamental expression of faith protected by the Nigerian Constitution and affirmed by the Supreme Court. We will not relent until this protection is restored in full, for these eleven students and for every Muslim child in Nigeria’s schools.
Disu Kamor
Executive Chairman,
Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC)
[email protected]