Police enforcing Islamic law in the city of Kano publicly destroyed some 240,000 bottles of beer on Wednesday, the latest move in a wider crackdown on behaviour deemed “immoral” in the area.
The banned booze had been confiscated from trucks coming into the city in recent weeks, said officials from the Hisbah, the patrol tasked with enforcing the strict Islamic law, known as sharia
Kano’s Hisbah chief Aminu Daurawa said at the bottle-breaking ceremony he had “the ardent hope this will bring an end to the consumption of such prohibited substances”.
A large bulldozer smashed the bottles to shouts of “Allahu Ahkbar” (God is Great) from supporters outside the Hisbah headquarters in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.
Kegs containing more than 8,000 litres of a local alcoholic brew called “burukutu” and 320,000 cigarettes were also destroyed.
“We hope this measure will help restore the tarnished image of Kano,” said Daurawa.
Since September, the Hisbah have launched sweeping crackdowns and made hundreds of arrests in Kano following a state-government directive to cleanse the commercial hub of so-called “immoral” practices.
The 9,000-strong moral police force works alongside the civilian police but also has other duties, including community development work and dispute resolution.
Sharia was reintroduced across northern Nigeria in 2001, but the code has been unevenly applied.
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