Nigerian appeal court upholds a school hijab ban because the school takes no state subvention

A Nigerian appellate court has decided that a schoolgirl's right to cover her head can turn on whether her school receives a government cheque. On 3 July 2026 the Court of Appeal sitting in Ibadan, hearing suit CA/IB/347/2024, allowed an appeal by the International School, University of Ibadan, and set aside a High Court judgment that had permitted 11 Muslim girls to wear the hijab with their uniform.

The vote was two to one. Justice Biobele Georgewill delivered the lead judgment and Justice K.I. Amadi concurred. Justice Fadawu Umar dissented, holding that the appeal lacked merit and should have been dismissed. Georgewill held that the school, known as ISI, is a private institution, and that the Supreme Court decision permitting the hijab, which concerned a public school in Lagos State, therefore did not reach it. He held further that the right to manifest religion is a personal right capable of being waived, and that these students had waived it by signing an undertaking at enrolment to obey the school's rules, including its dress code.

The precedent under argument is Lagos State Govt and Others v Abdulkareem and Others, appeal SC.910/2016, decided on 17 June 2022 by a seven member panel of the Supreme Court by a majority of five to two. The reported judgment, led by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, records the route the case took. A Lagos High Court judge dismissed the students' originating summons on 17 October 2014, reasoning that a common uniform kept signs of religious belief and affiliation out of the classroom and that refusing the headscarf breached neither section 38 nor section 42 of the 1999 Constitution. A full panel of the Court of Appeal in Lagos unanimously reversed that ruling on 21 July 2016. The Supreme Court then dismissed the state government's further appeal.

The Ibadan dispute began in November 2018, when ISI turned away Muslim girls who arrived in the headscarf. Eleven of them, supported by the Muslim Rights Concern, took the school to the Oyo State High Court. Justice Moshood Ishola ruled in their favour on 22 May 2024, holding that the ban breached their rights to freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination. The school and the university appealed, and that appeal produced the July judgment.

Implementation was immediate. A notice to parents and guardians said that from Monday 6 July no student would be permitted to wear a hijab with the school uniform. Five days after its own decision, the court froze it. On 8 July a panel led by Justice Amadi ordered all parties to maintain the status quo pending the hearing of the Muslim Rights Concern application for a stay of execution, and adjourned the matter to 7 October 2026. Amadi observed that the certified true copy of the judgment had not yet been released, that the seven days allowed by law for its release were still running, and that he had been told the school had already begun pressing students over the headscarf. He asked why there was any rush.

The reasoning is contested on its own terms. The Muslim Public Affairs Centre, in a statement signed by its executive chairman Disu Kamor, said the majority had applied "a bookkeeping test masquerading as constitutional analysis", arguing that section 38 does not qualify its protection by an institution's funding structure. The Muslim Rights Concern disputes the private classification outright, saying ISI is established and administered under the University of Ibadan, a Federal Government institution, on public land. The Muslim Public Affairs Centre also points to what it calls a contradiction inside the judgment: the same panel let stand the trial court's finding that confining the students to a library for three to four hours violated their rights, while reducing the damages awarded from one million naira to two hundred thousand naira.

Accounts of the court itself do not fully agree. Vanguard, reporting the News Agency of Nigeria, named the 8 July panel as Amadi sitting with Justices Fadawu Umar and Binta Suberu, whereas the majority on 3 July was Georgewill and Amadi. Pulse dated the overturned High Court decision to 2022, while other outlets citing court records put it at 22 May 2024.

What is not yet known is whether the Supreme Court will hear the appeal at all, and if it does, whether it will accept that its 2022 ruling stops at the gate of a school that takes no subvention. Nothing in the judgments so far defines what makes a school established by a federal university private. The stay application is listed for 7 October 2026. Until then, what the 11 girls may wear to class rests on an order to change nothing.