Nigeria: How We Sacrifice Our Children to Paedophiles

Our Child Sexual Abuse Shame

It made my blood boil when I first read snippets of this story in Chxta’s Daily Dispatches, the case of a 7-year old girl who was repeated sexually abused by grown men that the magistrate found it just to release one of the paedophile rapists on bail whilst committing the girl to remand in a Child Correctional Centre. [Full Story]

There is no doubt that we find the issue of child sexual abuse difficult to understand or manage in Nigeria, it is there, children suffer but find no avenue, forum or platform to ask for protection and ultimately justice.

Community Spirit and Commodifying Assault

It is so disheartening to read of the ordeal and terror the 7-year old girl went through from grooming, inducements and threats to her life that the paedophile made it routine to seek sexual pleasures of the poor innocent child as her guardians strove to make ends meet as well as care for the child.

Our community spirit implicitly expects that amongst adults, a child is safe and will be free from abuse whilst any responsible adult in that setting rises to the occasion if need be to protect or extract the vulnerable from untenable situations.

However, when it comes to sexual abuse, everyone seems to clam up, no one wants to countenance the idea that some respectable member of the community has crossed the line to the utterly reprehensible that they all close ranks and the victim is left to suffer from the pall of shame and silence that has enveloped the community.

What Law Allows This?

The girl gave such a gruesome tale of the many times the rotten men took advantage of her and her guardians might well have been derelict in their responsibilities of care, love, attention and protection but to then send the girl to a Child Correction Centre really smacks of the lowest form of apathy that should only belong to fiction.

The  Magistrate, Mrs E. B. Daudu of Ikeja Magistrate Court, does not have to be a mother to be aware of what this child has suffered but if there is any law or recommendation for justice that has informed her of this heinously contemptible decision, it must be expunged from our legal tomes with immediate effect for our humanity first and then for the sake of basic civilisation.

Only a Barbarous community with a primitive mindset redolent of primates of the jungle will see any inkling of justice in freeing the criminal and incarcerating the victim, a child at that.

Our Duty to Childhood Failing

What could she have done wrong to deserve such a double denial of justice, fairness, respite and at worst motherly concern that her attackers have gotten off lightly and she is condemned to institutionalised care? A correctional facility at that as if her crime is to be a vulnerable child who has had the misfortune of being born in Nigeria.

The child should be able to roam free and develop without being fearful of abuse or assault. Whilst guardians do have responsibilities, children cannot be held on leash like dogs though it also means sexual predators be kept off the streets.

We Need New Thinking

With this case, the sexual predators will only seek another to abuse and when done, probably murder the victim to prevent being exposed as they were with this particular issue – this must be unacceptable to every well-meaning Nigerian.

It would be easy to advocate kicking Mrs E. B. Daudu off the bench, excoriating the police and child protection agencies with unspeakable vitriol and lynching the miscreants mercilessly but what we need is a change in thinking in our communities, we must not tolerate, condone or excuse paedophilia making the culprits pay a hefty price and giving the victims all the consideration, empathy and support required to heal them of those rotten experiences they lived through.

CHELD - A Conversation on Domestic Violence

An Invitation

A Conversation on Domestic Violence

A CHELD & Law Society UNILAG Event

Wednesday, 12th of December, 2012

10:00 - 15:00

Julius Berger Hall

University of Lagos

Please attend

Domestic Violence Resource

CHELD

HELConsulting

Writing for the Daily Times

Witness and dumbfound

Domestic violence is something that appears to be a taboo topic in Nigeria and I have seen my share of it as a child. In the scheme of things my experience looks inconsequential.

My parents never hit at each other but there was enough tension in the house for us to know that the mental and emotional torture was just as palpable.

I was only 5 when my father intent on walking away from a tense situation got into his car and as my uncle held my mother back, he revved out of the garage and unbeknownst to him, he drove over my mother’s shin – almost 42 years on, the event plays back in my mind like a slow-motion horror film.

Raze the bloody altars

Elsewhere, I have seen worse, wives battered beyond recognition and nothing in the community, in society or in the law to actively come to their aid in support and in defence of their right to live in so-called matrimonial bliss.

The preponderance of culture in a majority of cases has had the battered wife return to that atrocious environment as we sacrifice our mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces and womenfolk on the many bloody altars of tradition, religion, custom, beliefs or just plain male chauvinistic arrogance.

Titi Arowolo

The extreme of which was the alleged literal butchering of Titi Arowolo by her husband, the details were graphic enough to not need corroborative pictures and the case languishes in court a good 18 months after the crime. [My Blog]

The incredulity of it all lies in the many facets of the story, the preparations for a wedding without preparing for marriage, the acquiescence, silence or indifference of their community when the conflict started which culminated in murder, the lackadaisical attitude of the law to issues of domestic violence and the crown it all, a pathologist said the lady was stabbed 76 times whilst the father-in-law professes his son had 17 knife wounds to his view of the daughter having sustained just 3 stab wounds.

We will not go into who is more qualified as a pathologist but we need to talk, we need to talk about Domestic Violence in our society and address the taboo issues head-on.

A Necessary Conversation

Dr Cheluchi Onyemeukwe runs the Centre for Health Ethics Law and Development (CHELD) which is established to employ law, policy, ethics promotion and research, and practical health development projects to improve public health in Nigeria and other African countries.

Writing to me in an email, her words, “I said I would do something after that Titi Arowolo case and this is my keeping my word to myself and God.”

In conjunction with the Law Society of the University of Lagos, CHELD is presenting A Conversation on Domestic Violence – Awareness, Education and Empowerment.

She says, “We discuss the signs of abuse, the myths around domestic violence, what to do in an abusive situation, the law on domestic violence such as the Lagos State law on domestic violence, the human rights aspects of domestic violence, the emotional underpinnings and impact of abuse.

We emphasise that domestic violence is not only physical abuse but also emotional abuse.

We talk about developing a strong sense of self and self-esteem.”

Then she says, “These Conversations are intended to do several things including but not limited to - keep the issue of domestic violence on the front burner and in the consciousness of different parts of society, provide information that is currently lacking, provide an avenue for people in abusive situations to seek help, and create avenues to break down cultural obstacles.

I started with doing counselling and providing material and other support to victims, but I think we need to do more, to do something before people find themselves in tragic situations.”

And she concludes, “We have also set up an Online Resource Centre for Domestic Violence, which will provide information on legal and organisational supports, helplines etc. It is at this Domestic Violence resource website. It is still under development.”

I endorse this

I am quite in support of this event and the many initiatives that will keep the issue of Domestic Violence in the public eye until every similitude of it is eradicated and those who practice it face the full might of the law with prompt justice for the victims.

There should be no excuse for Domestic Violence and it should never be excused by whatever belief system we may adhere to regardless of its provenance.

I implore you to attend this event if you can, share the information with as many as you can and visit the websites for more information on this issue.

Thank you.

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.