22/04/2026
When You Say “Behave Like the Romans,” BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR!!!!!
You said it yourself: “If you're in Rome, behave like the Romans.”
Fine. Let's follow that logic to its natural destination and see if you still like where it takes us.
Kano is Muslim. Sokoto is Muslim. Zamfara, Katsina, parts of Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Gombe. These are Muslim-dominated states. By your own reasoning, any non-Muslim coming to write JAMB in those states should be handed a hijāb at the gate. No hijāb, no entry. Because when you're in Persia, you behave like the Persians, right?
If you find that suggestion offensive, disturbing, or ridiculous; CONGRATULATIONS. You have just understood the exact feeling you dismissed when you told Muslim girls to simply “wear a cap.”
By the way, it's just a “HIJĀB...” Muslims can endure to lose it for a cap.
By the way it's just a “HIJĀB...” Non-muslims can easily adopt it for the exam. Isn't it just for 2 hours or less?
The problem with your argument is not that it's passionate. It's that it's selective. You applied the “conform or leave” standard exclusively to one group, in one direction, as if Nigeria only flows one way. But Nigeria is not a one-way street. It is a shared road, and every lane must carry the same rules or none of them hold.
And if it were to hold, Muslims have more population than other faith, about 53%. Let others blend with our traditions, not us being forced to agree with the minority.
You brought up airports, NYSC camps, embassies, and international exams as precedents. That our precious Muslim sisters should never adorn their hijāb to those exams. But here's what's interesting.. IELTS and TOEFL actually make accommodations for religious head coverings. NYSC has been forced to revisit its own policies on this. Embassies in many countries now have gender-sensitive screening procedures specifically to protect religious identity during identification. The world you used as your benchmark is actually moving in the OPPOSITE direction of what you're arguing.
You said: “Projecting hijāb as a compulsory moral standard is your belief, not everybody's belief.”
Correct. And nobody asked you to wear one.
But there is a difference between “imposing” a belief and “living by” one. A Muslim girl wearing her hijāb to an exam centre is not asking you to cover your head. She is simply refusing to uncover hers. Those are two very different things. One is imposition. The other is existence.
When a Muslim woman wears her hijāb to a job interview, is she imposing Islām on the interviewer? When a Christian woman wears a cross to a government office, is she turning the state into a church? No. Religious identity is not aggression. Wearing your faith is not an attack on anyone else's freedom.
You asked, “Where do you stop? Once you allow one, another person brings theirs.”
That question sounds logical. But it is actually a disguised argument against all accommodation, for anyone, ever. It is the argument that says: “because we cannot be fair to everyone, let us be fair to no one.” That is not order. That is uniformity dressed up as justice.
And uniformity is not the same as equality. Uniformity could be based on oppression or suppression.
A system that treats every citizen the same on the surface, while making life harder for specific groups beneath the surface, is not neutral. It is quietly discriminatory. True fairness means asking not just “are the rules the same for everyone?” but “do these rules cost everyone the same thing?” Asking a Muslim girl to choose between her faith and her future is not a small cost. It is not comparable to adjusting a hat.
Here is the truth people do not want to say out loud; not the one you offered, but the real one:
Nigeria works only when it works for “ALL” Nigerians. The moment we start deciding whose identity is acceptable inside national systems and whose must be tucked away for a few hours, we are no longer building a country. We are building a hierarchy, and marking who belongs at the top.
The mentality of “comply or be excluded,” when applied unevenly, does not protect national unity. It slowly poisons it. Because the people being asked to shrink, every single time, do not forget. And a nation held together by the silence of those it marginalises is not peaceful. It is just quiet before the storm.
So yes, if you want to go the “when in Rome” route, let us be consistent. Let us apply it everywhere, in every state, in every direction, with no exceptions.
But something tells me that is not the Nigeria y'all actually want.
Neither do I.
What I want, what we should all want, is a Nigeria where no citizen is forced to choose between their identity and their opportunity. That is a version of this country worth building.
✍️ Wrote by: Abdulsabur Adeiza Abdulrazak
