Apology 001

Village rag of ruse

This morning, I came upon a malicious false accusation that was made against a friend on Twitter to the effect that he was allegedly recorded on video assaulting a woman and swearing at her.

On observing the video, it was clear that neither the man assaulting the woman nor the voice of the perpetrator was my friend, the accent was American, his is British-Nigerian. That this video appeared on one of the more odious vehicles of invective and the worst of Nigerian journalistic standards was at first instructive, the text dripped with malice, it could not be overlooked.

As it transpired, Nigeria being a country in the rat race of keeping and settling scores, someone decided to publish this malign atrocity and then continued with commentary that excoriated my friend in the most uncharitable terms before proceeding to church.

Malicious and atrocious

Meanwhile, anyone who had any idea of who my friend was had already seen this hatchet job for what it was, the antecedents of the village rag masquerading as an online newspaper indicated that the act was deliberate to cause injury and harm to the name and reputation of my friend.

Whilst, engagement on Twitter can both be robust and virulent, there are times when even my friend might have exceeded the bounds of decency. In the snake pit of Nigerian commentary, the search for gentlemen can be futile as to be impossible. However, that should not excuse the abuse of platforms and expression to denigrate anyone, that applies to both my friend and anyone else.

Address the issue at hand

I am not here to keep the record of longstanding conflicts between personalities on Social Media, however, I can as occasion allows when I am observing my timeline on Twitter engage in the discourse or the debate as the opportunity comes. This morning presented such an opportunity and for that particular act, I walked in with the clear intention of defending my friend from that particular smear and address all who colluded in propagating the odium.

For some people, they might seek moral equivalences to justify that atrocity, it does not excuse this particular one I decided to address and the forum is open for others to address grievances they might have with other issues they feel so strongly about. The idea that one should help them fly their own flags, whilst understandable is neither a duty nor an obligation.

I have on many occasions called out friend, acquaintance, stranger and worse on general issues, I am nobody’s surrogate, I work as an independent mind on the matters I choose to address and never as a policeman seeking to impute offence at every possible opportunity.

It was a hatchet job

The backlash was fierce and unrelenting, with that came a conditionally grudging apology which some considered a full-hearted apology, I was having none of it. Eventually, the village rag pulled down that rotten hatchet job, which it was and appeared to apologise. The apologies were an apology of an apology in and of themselves.

I say it was a rotten hatchet job, because if it wasn’t, the story would have been edited to address the matter of Violence Against Women, which one of the protagonists tried to use to deflect the opprobrium for his perfidy. It got to a point that I found myself having to write an Idiot’s Guide to Apology and I labelled it Apology 001 because to have given it Apology 101 would have made it impossible for some to understand as a very advanced course in appropriate restitution.

The Idiot’s Guide: Apology 001

The Idiot’s Guide appears below and I have really not seen anything that resembles an apology on the matter. Just because you dislike a person does not mean you cannot stand for right in support of that person, that is what constitutes having a value system and principles. It is left to us to decide if past hurt is an excuse for allowing injustice and worse to thrive in our midst.

Apology 001: A regretful acknowledgement of an offence or failure.

Apology 001: An apology requires first an expression of regret; that expression cannot be conditional.

Apology 001: An expression of regret cannot be prefaced with the conditional if, because that invalidates the acknowledgement of error.

Apology 001: An apology must stand on its own, it must be full, unreserved, sincere, honest and final.

Apology 001: An apology must fully repudiate all the errors and claims that caused offence. For example; I am sorry for falsely accusing ...

Apology 001: If an apology is not grudging and deemed honest, it will be obvious to all and the offended will receive it gracefully.

Apology 001: Until we grasp the fundamentals of giving a good apology, we cannot advance to the Apology 101 course. :)

Nigeria: What Rape Victims Face in Court

Caught my eye

The headline was what got me as it appeared on one of my Twitter lists - Ex-Corp Member Weeps in Court When Asked to Show Her Private Part [1] – it was irresistible to my curiosity I had to view the circumstances of such an outrageous request.

A prominent traditional ruler had been accused of the rape of a 23-year old lady who was in youth service within the domain of the ruler.

The lady must have been caught in circumstances beyond her control when the lecherous ruler first attempted to gain carnal knowledge of her through the belittlement of throwing money at her which she rejected before he allegedly forced himself on her raping her.

Seeking justice

When she made a case of it, he offered her money not to make a scandal of it and considering the high thresholds of credibility needed to bring rape cases to court against quite influential members of the public, it must have been an ordeal to have gotten this far.

The story does not say when she was raped and the time that had elapsed between the alleged incident and when the case was heard in court but that is beside the point.

Beyond belief

What is quite shocking and brazen in its effrontery and insensitivity as the news story portends is that it says the monarch himself asked the victim to show her allegedly bruised private parts to confirm to the court that she had been raped.

It goes on to say the counsel for the respondent did on cross-examination of the witness demand, NOT ask, but demand that she expose her privates for the scrutiny of the judge, the present counsel and prosecution to ascertain the veracity of her claim.

Now, even if the court doubled as a gynaecological unit and the all the learned purveyors of the ways and means of the law were certified consultant gynaecologists, this request would have been utterly improper at best.

This direction of questioning after being overruled should have had the counsel sanctioned with the risk of contempt by reason of deliberately outraging public decency.

If the monarch had also spoken out in initiating this line of questioning, he should have been sternly cautioned but the news story offers no such detail.

Bad handling of a sensitive situation

In my opinion, the purpose of that line of questioning was no doubt geared towards first embarrassing the victim, then humiliating her in her quest for justice before seriously upsetting her that she might lose all her composure to the advantage of the defence.

I am concerned that the judge appeared to be a tad lackadaisical in dealing firmly with this affront to polite proceedings where the counsel should have for bringing the legal profession into disrepute risked disbarment.

However, the sadder picture exemplified in this case is the lack of courtesy and sensitivity to victims of rape in open court and the effrontery and brazenness of patriarchy at the plight of victimised women.

What victims face

Men of power and influence behave as if they have right and authority to demand and obtain sexual favours whilst being unable handle rejection or negation of their desires.

They believe if they have the physical means to overpower the woman, then they can have their way without consequence.

They expect that the shock and shame of being raped presents a barrier to prosecution as the victim has to wade through hurdles of location, situation, opportunity, motive, circumstance, believability and influence to start off the process of justice.

As society will probably first find fault with the victim before it considers the egregious criminality of the perpetrator.

What to do

There is every need to have stronger support networks for rape victims regardless of the probable cause and the availability of evidence necessary to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, all those accused of rape.

As another human-being and sadly of the male species, I have the fullest sympathy for the victim and I hope that those involved in this contemptible show of chauvinism too vile for expression are visited with opprobrium, shame, disgrace and obloquy as a deterrent to any other counsel who might think sailing close to the wind in rude discourse can be done with impunity and without dire consequences.

Source

[1] Ex-Corp Member Weeps in Court When Asked to Show Her Private Part - Nigeria DailyPost

Stoners required for Sharia execution

Punishing crime against women

Crime and violence against women is still something men and society seem to be able to do with impunity in Africa, one report suggests it is seldom punished. There are civilising voices that are being raised to highlight these issues and bring focus to the need for radical and positive change.

Unfortunately, one such voice for change in the blogging community seems to have lost the desire to continue this thankless activity and I very well sympathise, social issues in Africa cannot gain prominence where the quest for basic survival is the primary pre-occupation.

Apathy reigns whilst hedonistic pursuits leave us in need for things to improve our society and raise our quality of life, one would miss the voice of Black Looks on these matters.

Sharia in the headlines

The law and religion collide again in Nigeria's north where a man has been sentenced to be stoned to death by Sharia Law.

His heinous crime is the forcible raping of two teenage girls, an act he committed with an accomplice who got off lightly with just a six-month sentence.

I would not argue the disproportionate difference in sentencing, as to how a rapist and an accomplice cannot both be accessories to the same crime and how not even a corporal punishment element appears in the sentencing of the supposedly lesser criminal.

The logic escapes me that the horridness of the crime of rape has been belittled in some way that would make it arguable for a participant in encouraging a rape might get off quite so lightly. Am I expressing surprise at Sharia judgements being so lenient?

There is a risk of imputing tribalism, in noting the ambiguous name of the main criminal which is indeterminately Southern Nigerian (Ade Debo) as compared with the more Northerly sounding and Muslim name of the accomplice (Shagari Abubakar), but I would contend that greater principles of due legal process, albeit Sharia Law prevailed in the execution of justice and judgement.

The punishment

In the West, rapists do get quite stiff sentences, even up to life imprisonment, in America, it would exact a capital punishment, especially if it leads to murder - I would argue that rape should and must be severely punished if proven.

The points of interest arise when you hear the proclamation of the judge; Aliyu Mohammed, "For your action, you will be stoned to death as ordained by Allah".

I would not dispute this statement, but how many times have we seen certain actions of men carried out in the name of God so as to be considered credible, unassailable and inviolable.

The we read that the men have 30 days to appeal the sentence where man in the assumed capacity of Allah can commute what Allah ordained to a lesser punishment - maybe I am being a bit pedantic here.

Are you a stoner at heart?

If the sentence does not get commuted, in the 21^st Century, would there be a wolf pack of Nigerians available to pick up specially selected stones to throw at a fellow human-being till he were dead?

Would people be compelled by their Islamic leaders to do the Allah-ordained task of stoning or face the wrath of Allah?

Surely the execution of criminals should be the function of the state and this should be carried out in a humane and civilised manner, to set this activity in the marketplace of a mob of bloodthirsty people creating images too savage for Allan Quatermain's Africa is beyond the pale.

The bizarre nature of this whole thing would be if certain adherents of Sharia principles offer their services as professional "stoners", or rather, they are catalysts that help instigate and encourage the mob to pick up stones and finish off the criminal as he bellows out blood-curdling screams of pain to the hearing of inured children.

The role of civil law

We should punish crime appropriately, but at this juncture, civil law is probably the better tool to handle cases like this than traditional religious methods which would take the focus away from the crime and place it on the criminal as activists move to prevent this sentence from being carried out.

Somehow, Sharia Law does have its place in society, but it also has to adapt to modern values in such a way that social matters are handled with the adjudication of the Sharia court whilst felonies and serious criminal matters are forwarded to the civil law division.

The way Sharia Law grabs the headlines when these punishments are given persuades people to highlight the fossilised aspects of this code of conduct and creates resistance to the more civilising forces for social cohesion that Sharia Law might bring to communities.

The only progress I have seen in this matter is where the female victims of this sex crime have not been charged with some absurd offence of encouraging the rape; amazing perspective, but too valid in Africa to be ignored.