Nigeria: On the abandonment of Hope, 2, accused of witchcraft

Let Hope be seen

The picture was haunting and it was heartrending, one of a seriously emaciated boy being fed from a water bottle by a heavily tattooed Caucasian lady on a street in Nigeria. [Independent]

The boy who got given the name Hope could hardly be 2 years old and was apparently thrown into the streets by his ‘parents’ because something, someone, somewhere had convinced them that he was a witch.

I am of the opinion that we really have no witches in Nigeria, my idea of a witch is one who commands certain supernatural powers for the spectacular, like something out of the Exorcist.

We create Hope daily

However, what we have in Nigeria is collusion to do evil, the vague dread of the supernatural according to the words of Lord Lugard and a complete ignorance of mental illness. This is compounded by the activities of evil, malicious and outrageously malevolent people who have built a reputation on trading on the fears, anxieties and misfortunes of the public by choosing the easy target of stigmatising children as witches and wizards.

Once the public is mesmerised by the preaching of these false prophets, purveyors of heresies and unspeakable evil, children become the brunt of their frustration leading to heinous physical abuse and the torture of children in the guise of exorcism and consequently the abandonment of children like Hope.

Rescuing Hope

It is a sad reflection on our society in 2015, that it has taken a Danish woman to take this child off the streets and nurse him back to health. Anja Ringgren Loven is before anyone screams White Saviour Complex, the new Mary Slessor in the self-same regional community just over a century ago where twins were put to death for the ignorance of the biology of reproduction.

Anja Ringgren Loven runs the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) which she founded with her husband David and it now homes 34 children rescued from the consequences of religiously-inspired superstition that majors in stigmatisation rather than emancipation of spirit, soul and body.

The abusers of Hope

I have in times past written about the evil ministry of a self-described apostle Helen Ukpabio who thankfully was expunged from the UK before she had the time to spew out her venomously hurtful sermons that castigate the vulnerable to enhance her reputation. It is my view that anyone who uses religion to incite violence against the vulnerable, especially children should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and taken off our streets.

We are so far behind in understanding and protecting the rights of the child, our womenfolk, and the disabled and other minority groups in our society. What we cannot afford in our quest to leave the primitive for the civilised is to allow the likes of this apostle of wrath to thrive in any part of our society.

Many a Hope helped

The picture of Hope and Anja has captured our hearts and hopefully it will capture our minds and our actions, all that have by misfortune and circumstance been given the rotten lot of Hope, find loving, caring, hopeful and encouraging places of succour to become healthy and wealthy members of our greater humanity.

I could not find a website for the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF), it would have offered an opportunity for us to contribute to the work of this amazing Good Samaritan organisation.

Making better Hope stories

However, the biggest challenge we face is the need for us as individuals and as a society to begin to think for ourselves about what kind of society we want to be by addressing the various issues of abuse and ignorance. We need to apply more rational thinking to the use of religion for the betterment of humanity rather than for the ostracism of the vulnerable.

Most importantly, we need to stop condoning evil practices done in the name of religion, culture, tradition or some belief system, if it hurts even the smallest amongst us, we have failed as a people and we need to repent of our tolerance of this and work for meaningful change to give everyone a chance to participate in our humanity rather than be victims of the mobs we join with to mete our Neanderthal violence.

We have a choice to let the children laugh and thrive amongst us and see less of the situation that brought Hope into focus.

Africa and the mind-set of non-issues

Not waiting in vain any longer

I was not particularly ululating over Barack Obama’s trip to Kenya, neither did I find time to see what he was up to.

I did my share of waiting to wave at dignitaries in the 1970s when we stood as pupils of Corona School by the railway line at Bukuru, Jos waving Nigerian flags at the convoy of Yakubu Gowon the then Head of State of Nigeria and his friend Gnassingbe Eyadema from Togo when they drove up to Yakubu Gowon’s homestead near Pankshin.

Besides, every Children’s Day, the 27^th of May, we went marching to the salute of the governor of Benue-Plateau, J. D. Gomwalk, really, I had had enough of that stuff.

Treating people differently

However, there were some things one could not miss about what Barack Obama said in Kenya, some brilliantly highlighted by the Independent.

Obama was always going to talk about gay rights, but he had a broader thing to say about rights which, unfortunately, was lost on his host.

“When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode. And bad things happen.”

He could not have said that in any simpler terms, to codify the treatment of people differently because of their difference in the law will not only erode the freedoms of those people, it sets the stage for eroding the freedoms of the next vulnerable group.

Missing the point totally

There is no doubt that there are many vulnerable, voiceless and somewhat powerless groups in Africa, women, children, girls, the poor, the sick, the indigent, the minority by tribe, religion or some other association, they are all in line for a form for erosion of their rights eventually, even if it does not seem obvious now.

Uhuru Kenyatta a few months younger than Barack Obama and son of Jomo Kenyatta who led the struggle for Kenyan independence said in response, ‘gay rights was "generally a non-issue" for most Kenyans’.

That sort of dismissiveness is dangerous makes you wonder about the allegations of culpability that led to ICC charges against Uhuru with regards to the post-election violence in 2007 to 2008.

How many other non-issues?

The question becomes how many other rights are generally a non-issue for most Kenyans? How many minority groups have had their freedoms eroded because they have become a non-issue, an insignificance, a nuisance, a distraction and are readily ignored because they do not matter?

For how long will the leadership of Kenya follow the inclination of the majority to the detriment of the minority who they are also elected to serve and protect?

It was a poor choice of words, but broadly the issue of gay rights in Africa has become a litmus test of what its leadership is ready to address progressively in the name of human rights.

We lost many opportunities

They have expended so much energy in promulgating anti-gay laws to persecute and prosecute people who are generally invisible and in the shadows whilst ignoring the critically important aspects of rights for women and children, national development, education, health and welfare for all.

In the meantime, the seriously disaffected who have already concluded that they are viewed as a non-issue to the majority, have found the comfort extremist Jihadist companionship to wreak the havoc of unspeakable terror all around Africa.

The non-issue talk is a mind-set, a rotten one at that, because it goes without saying that many who have resorted to terror would never have considered it pathway of protest or emancipation if those who were supposed to represent them listened, engaged, participated and contributed to their wellbeing that they did not feel they were a non-issue but were acknowledged, respected and included in the greater and laudable pursuit of being part of their nation for its good, its development and its progress.

In pursuing gays, we lost opportunities to improve the lives of, and consolidate progressive laws with respect to people we see daily who are affected the most by our inaction even if they support our actions against the minority of the different and the other.

Nigeria: My plea for Wasilu Umar, the 14-year old bride

On crime and punishment

Murder is never a good thing, the victim having lost their life and the perpetrator having committed a heinous crime which by all standards of justice should be punished.

Whilst homicide should be adequately punished to reflect the crime, I have never been an advocate of capital punishment. I do not subscribe to the old Mosaic Law concept of an eye for an eye.

If ever I were in a position to plead for mitigation, it would be to temper justice with mercy, asking for a level of compassion that appreciates the gravity of offence but a lenience that would be both instructive and reformative of the perpetrator.

Yet, I would make an exception, on the matter of mercy for child sex abusers, whilst I would never go as far as advocating state-sponsored mutilation, there is nothing that suggests such people should walk our streets freely. No length of incarceration can judiciously expiate for the damage wrought on the innocence of a child whose sexuality and sexual expression has been violated for the inordinate pleasure of an adult.

A child bride is wrong

This brings me to the case in Nigeria of a 14-year old bride, Wasilu Umar, who is to be charged with culpable homicide punishable by death for poisoning her 35-year old husband along with, unfortunately three other males aged 12, 13 and 25 respectively, besides the 10 others who survived, though after needing hospital treatment.

BBC News - Nigeria child bride 'poisons older husband'

Vanguard News - Kano seeks death sentence for alleged bride-killer

So many things do not sit right with this case which needs to be scrutinised without emotion. The first issue is, why is a 14-year old a bride? That ought not to be so, that she was pressed into this liaison by her father is both unfortunate and really, putting all religious sentiment aside, cruel and criminal.

Then, she was married off to a 35-year old; this sort of shameful and reprehensible conduct needs to be expunged from our society and anything that gives licence to this kind of culture needs to be excoriated in the sternest terms.

Betrothal maybe, but never marriage

There might be scope for betrothal, but marriage must come much later, at the minimum, it should be the age of maturity, at 18 years, for instance, and it should be only be sanctioned where all parties have the full rights to consent to such a union. The girl, there are no two ways about it - a female of 14 years of age is NOT a woman, she is a girl and should not be made into a woman regardless of societal privations for the sexual proclivities of a patriarchy that cares little about the welfare of the girl-child.

The unfortunate situation of marrying off a girl to someone who could easily be her father thereby putting the life of 14 souls at risk, 4 people dead already, bears the hallmarks of a serial killer, 14 people would have been carnage unspeakable, but we must never absent our minds from the cause and we must not be blinded from the truth.

Slavery is the name

The next question is why a 14-year old girl has to cater for 14 people, whilst extended families are attributes of the Nigerian culture and many including children have to play their part within the family, the idea that a girl has to cook for or serve 14 people smacks of that forgettable word called slavery.

That any society would accept and condone such because I do not think this girl is an exception is contemptible, it needs to be addressed with urgency, it is abuse, it is vile and there must be instruments to elevate the rights of a child beyond being sentenced with juvenile marriages contracted for the purpose of submitting the girl to an abysmally cruel life of servitude in the kitchen and in the bedroom.

Society must reflect on what to do

Then the next question is, should she be punished for the crime? There should be a punishment, but it should not be capital punishment. For the innocent lives lost, there is no clear indication as to whether the girl at 14 really knew what the consequences of her actions would be. There is a case also for pleading her innocence due to diminished responsibility.

We may not be able to apply the first world aspirations of a happy marriage to this situation, it was anything, but happy. Much was asked of this girl well beyond her abilities that those responsible must carry a share of the blame. Her father first, her husband, now deceased, and the society or community that celebrated this or turned a blind eye until bodies began to fall into graves.

Most of all, what the girl needs is rehabilitation, the decision to make an example of her is a sad reflection of a society unwilling to stand for right and stand for the emancipation of the girl-child. The greater absurdity to this matter is how this society automatically ascribes womanhood to a girl the moment some dirty old man takes her for a wife.

Protect the girl

In essence, the girl is being tried as an adult. I am saddened by this development, I hope that better judgement prevails to give the girl another chance to grow out of childhood into womanhood with all the opportunities girls of that age are supposed to have – some freedom to be a child, the latitude to be an adolescent and the right to a decent education.

I cannot suggest that they send the girl home because there is where her problems started, but she does have to be sent somewhere where her life, her rights and her freedoms are fought for vigorously and protected by every means possible.

This charge of culpable homicide punishable by death is by all standards a shameful societal regression that must never be countenanced.

Opinion: This violent denigration and murder of girls and women must stop

Sudan: Merian Ibrahim – Apostasy & Adultery

The week ended with some good news for women, Meriam Ibrahim of Sudan who was sentenced to death for apostasy and 100 lashes for the additional charge of adultery for contracting an ‘illegal’ marriage to a Christian is to be released. [BBC News]

If not for the fact that she was with child and about to be put to bed, if is very likely that the political expediency of Sharia law might have exacted the judgement on the woman. Yet, they were ready to punish the lady as soon as her child was weaned.

In the 21^st Century, the state must never have any influence on what an adult chooses to believe, the idea that religious beliefs should be viewed as congenital; that is, passed down from parent to child with the child not having any option to rethink, to reason, to question or to abandon the faith of their ancestors and adopt new experiences and faiths when they reach adulthood is utterly anachronistic and archaic.

Religious politics

The politicisation of religion and the conflation of traditions and beliefs into a bizarre culture underpinned by unacceptable moral laws that denigrates and violates the human rights of the child, our womenfolk, the poor and the deprived of power and opportunity is sometimes used by a Machiavellian elite to oppress and subdue, whilst those same laws rarely apply to the ruling class.

There is every reason for every free and liberated human being to join voices to ensure that the last vestiges of these rotten abuses of human rights are expunged from the statute books of every state that subscribes to blasphemy, apostasy and lèse majesté laws.

Pakistan: Farzana Parveen – Abduction and ‘Honour Killing’

Then in Pakistan, Farzana Parveen was bludgeoned to death by her own family members that included her father, in front of a Pakistan court, in public and with the police allegedly standing by as disinterested onlookers. [BBC News]

That Farzana at 25 had to go to court at all is unbelievably atrocious, she was appearing with her husband to fight her family’s claim that she had been abducted and had entered into a marriage against their wishes.

It makes you wonder when, if ever, women do reach adulthood and a status of independent means and personal responsibility in Pakistan.

A dereliction of duty

Yet, the courts were ready to hear this case, and knowing how volatile such issues are, the system failed to provide the necessary security and essential safeguards  to keep the warring factions apart whilst guaranteeing a modicum of safety for the defendant who was under duress from the law to defend herself.

Too many questions arise about the unfortunate culpability of the court, the presence of such laws in Pakistan’s criminal justice system, the indifference of the police who probably ascribe to the untenable culture of egregious abuse of women in incomprehensibly dishonourable crimes labelled ‘honour killings’.

There is absolutely no honour in the abuse of women, the imposition of marital duress on women against their wishes or the killing of such women that decide to disregard the wishes of others as they pursue their own happiness.

Do women have any rights?

The happiness of relations cannot automatically be the happiness of an individual and any system, law, tradition, culture or view that trammels the pursuit of personal happiness as a fundamental human right must be excoriated and dragged with all possible force into civilisation.

The fallout of this heinous public murder committed with impunity, was exacerbated by another revelation from Farzana Parveen’s husband who alleges he killed his first wife in order to fulfil his affections for Farzana. It makes you wonder whether women in Pakistan are only allowed to draw breath at the mercy of ‘greater’ men for whom they exist to give pleasure or be disposed of.

Where girls threaten a rotten patriarchal system

Surely, this should not be the case for a country that gave us the whirlwind political force of Benazir Bhutto, who I dare say was also disposed of by the Taliban patriarchy in 2007 and with us in England is Malala Yousafzai who the Taliban were ready to dispense of because she clamoured for the right for the education of girls. She was only 14 when they shot her.

These stories are however the ones that made the headlines, there is no telling how many more heinous crimes are committed against minorities in Pakistan’s legal terms and elsewhere without any intervention of the law for justice and the sad acquiescence of the system in supporting perpetrators of these abuses.

The spotlight is on religion, women rights and countries where human beings like us are treated as less than human with no respect for their person, their space, their ideas, their decisions, their happiness or their lives.

India: Gang rape and murder

Boys will be boys, some would say about some events in India that seems to have linked feral sexual appetite with a level of sadistic psychopathy that defies explanation. [BBC News]

Not only were the girls gang-raped by beasts in human skin, they were murdered and left hanging after the rapists had had their evil way with them.

Whenever the perpetrators of this rotten crime are caught as they should be, there is no punishment that can full atone for what they did, however, we should be in no doubt, these people are beyond rehabilitation and they do not belong in the openness of any society.

Unaffected establishment

What compounds this latest in a litany of gang rapes in India [7 publicised since December 2012] is the fact that the authorities are almost unconcerned and politicians seem to handle the matter with such levity that baffles the mind. They seem to be so disconnected from the realities of the victims as to be lacking in empathy and bereft of sympathy.

These gang rapes have become an inconvenience rather registering as a crime wave that needs to be checked and handled with the severity of the law and compassionate humanity.

In a land rich with cultural history that has produced remarkable world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and most especially, Indira Gandhi, whilst many have sexual needs, it needs to be clear that sexual favours should only ever be acquired with consent, where that is not the case, the perpetrators are no better than animals and one is minded that those rapists be put down like dogs.

Nigeria: Pricing the woman

Back in Africa, we arrive in Nigeria where having enjoyed the humour of the Bride Price App we must see a more serious point to the issue. Beyond the sexism and the objectification of womenfolk when about to contract a marriage, we see the commodification of women when attributes, achievements and looks are the fundamental factors deciding the bride price above the personhood and humanity of the woman.

We are all to a greater or lesser extent affected even if subliminally by this mindset and it is time for us to review our motives and objectives when we are to address these issues.

Blog - Nigeria: Some Truths About The Bride Price App

Nigeria: #BringBackOurGirls – Day 48

48 days since the 14^th of April, 2014 and we are still crying out #BringBackOurGirls with a development that has included the capture of Hassan Ali, a Boko Haram leader; we learnt from him that he had already married two of the abducted Chibok girls. [Leadership Newspapers]

Nothing ever in this world can ever justify the forcible abduction of girls into marital slavery, not to talk of the being in joined in unholy matrimony with Boko Haram brigands. At best, this is a case of aggravated rape.

These abductions are not new, but realising what has happened to the abducted makes for seriously horrific reading. Hassan Ali besides murdering his father and uncle sanctioned the killing of his own sister when after abduction she refuse to become a 'pleasure unit' of another Boko Haram leader.

Innumerable atrocities

Everything about Boko Haram points to something Voltaire said a few centuries ago, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

You have to ask what absurd belief system enables a man to commit the atrocity of murdering his filial relations and siblings. That alone should be enough to seek to proscribe Boko Haram and rid our good earth of every semblance of that organisation, its thinking and whatever support system it enjoys.

We are not the enemy

The challenge for the Federal Government of Nigeria is that for the first time they are forced to act beyond the vacuous promise to delivering results. The result being the rescue from Boko Haram of the Chibok girls; nothing can eradicate the plight of the girls from the world’s consciousness.

The sooner the government realises it has a responsibility to act by using every means possible to #BringBackOurGirls realising the protests are urging them to act decisively and purposefully, rather than some ploy to disrupt the comfortableness of their exalted and unaffected cocoons of power and privilege, the better it would be for all concerned. #BringBackOurGirls from the grip of the Boko Haram menace.

We must stand

As men, we need to be at the forefront of fighting for equality for all participants in our global village, ensuring their rights are upheld, protected and wrestled into existence arresting the descent into the Barbarism that makes other members of the human race any less than ourselves by reason of their gender, their beliefs, their orientation, their means, their culture or any other distinguishing element of our great and broad diversity.

I stand with our women for liberty, freedom and the freedom to pursue their happiness without restraint or interference as we all desire for ourselves in this world.

Opinion: These Narcissistic Religious Homophobes

You don’t know me now

I just got on the train in London, and there I recognised an old friend from secondary school, this was 13 years after we left school and 8 years after I last saw him in Nigeria.

We had hardly exchanged greetings before he asked, “Where do you church?” it was a Sunday, and I was not coming from church nor going to one. As I answered, that I was not going to one, the conversation ended there, and it was like I had become a nobody, invisible and inconsequential.

Now, this was someone who in secondary school was not just a friend, there was much else that happened between us, that is another story.

A fiend of a friend

However, today, that memory was revived when my friend who is somewhat like a kid brother too, Bisi Alimi shared on Facebook a letter he received from a ‘friend’ who he had not seen for nigh on 20 years and on seeing Bisi’s appearance on CNN with Christiane Amanpour wrote an atrocious missive questioning Bisi’s sexuality and much else.

This was my contribution to the commentary that followed on Facebook:

“This is what tires me about people who profess to be Christians, they ignore the person for the purpose of their religious pomposity. I have no time for people who having not seen me or interacted with me for ages think they suddenly can begin to impact any aspect of my life in anyway.

The effrontery of intrusiveness is not only disrespectful, it negates whatever purpose they have in mind and it is utterly annoying to think we all think the same deluded and blinkered way.

These hardly travelled ignorant nonentities who suddenly think they know the world and the expressway to heaven make me sick. Very sick indeed.”

Whatever I am is not your business

I make no bones about the fact that I love gays, anyone who has followed my blog or the catalogue of my writings over the last decade would have noticed that I write a lot about homosexuality, amongst other things as child sexual abuse, the abuse of women, religious abuse, heinous cruelty, intolerance within humanity, human rights and else.

Yet, I do not believe my sexuality is for public discussion, it is my business alone who I decide to love and share my sexual favours with, it should be of no concern to anyone but myself and whoever in a consensual liaison decides they want to spend intimate and quality time with me.

The pursuit of happiness, my happiness, is mine and mine alone to pursue, I do not subscribe to the communal or society view that I should be assimilated into certain cultural or traditional norms to satisfy those with familial, filial or some other relational affinity to me.

I am human, first

It is no secret that I am not married, I have never married, I do not have children and well, basically, I cannot have children after chemotherapy. I have made peace with myself about what my life is, I am blessed, and I am a survivor.

Most importantly, I am human first, I celebrate humanity, I celebrate diversity and seek to be a better person with thoughtfulness, understanding and knowing that if I have not walked a hard, long mile in another’s person’s shoes, I am far from pretending to the full knowledge of their experiences.

The marriage debate

After that Anti-Gay Bill was signed into law in Nigeria, I have been quite enamoured by the greater tolerance and reasonableness amongst many straight Nigerians who have elevated their core humanity above beliefs, traditions and altars of gruesome impugning accusation of others to embrace diversity, justice, fairness and human rights. They have displayed a very rare example of Good Samaritan humanity recognising that difference is no excuse to persecute, prosecute and execute.

Blog - Nigeria: Arrest Him! He's Homosexual!

On the matter of marriage, I am quite open-minded, much as I have never experienced one for myself, I have no qualms about whatever pairing of sexes decides to consecrate their union and have that recognised by civil law with all the civil rights that accrue to respecting that that relationship is in and of itself unique and separate from every other partnership.

We all know that there was no advocacy for same-sex marriage in Nigeria, a society where homosexuals are hardly expressive, talk less of seeking the kinds of freedoms of expression that we freely enjoy in Europe, in particular.

Same love celebrated

However, at the Grammys last month, the rapper Macklemore performed his amazingly unifying gay-rights activism song, Same Love and Queen Latifah conducted a mass marriage ceremony of 34 couples, many of whom were same-sex couples.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Queen Latifah, Mary... by dm_51b0b9210644b

Lyrics - “Same Love” by Macklemore with Ryan Lewis, featuring Mary Lambert

Earlier this evening, I read that Bizzle, a ‘Christian’ rapper had given the lyrics of Same Love a typically contemporary homophobic Christian rehash with all the traditional railing, vituperation and stereotypes trotted out by those who subscribe to such beliefs.

He thinks he knows best

Slate, the magazine did an analysis of this corruption of Same Love in the broader context of attitudes to homosexuality from those of a particular religious persuasion with the title - Bizzle’s Response to “Same Love” Reflects The Narcissism of Today’s Homophobia.

I would excerpt parts of the write-up liberally in the following paragraphs, but I beseech you to read it in its entirety, without prejudice and with an open mind, then reflect.

Slate - The Narcissism of Today’s Homophobia

“Homophobic people seem unable to see past themselves, to transcend their most rudimentary emotions and arrive at a place that’s often reachable only if we apply a modicum of reason—often spurred by empathy—to challenge old mental habits.”

“The late philosopher and psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl once wrote that those with narcissistic prejudice ‘cannot tolerate the idea that there exist people not like them.’”

“Borrowing another concept from psychoanalysis, homophobes may be especially likely to project their own narcissism onto others as a way to deflect taking responsibility for their own issues.”

They know nothing of the other

“The fixation of some straight people on the sex acts of gay people is another incarnation of homophobic narcissism.”

“But gay advocates are not asking for any and all relationships to be validated as marriages, just same-sex ones that otherwise meet state criteria. And gay people don’t claim equal rights based on our desire to have gay sex; we claim equal rights based on the argument that there is no good reason to treat us any differently from straight people, that granting such rights harms no one and helps millions.”

Usurping God’s place

What I found most profound in that article was this indictment of the narcissist, “It also reflects the narcissist’s limited capacity for empathy—an exercise in stepping out of the self to imagine the feelings of others.”

That is why I have found myself writing this blog, I have been always intolerant of intolerance and mostly, I cannot countenance those who lack the capacity and proudly demonstrate their incapacity for empathy.

These are the many who have hardly walked an inch in the shoes of another and already presume they can dictate, prescribe, proscribe, censure and control the lives of others because they know best, believe better and are secured in their holier than thou tents to look down on the ‘dregs’ of humanity passing God’s judgement from on high.

Nigeria: Arrest Him! He's Homosexual!

The sketch

Alice More (Wife): Arrest him!

Sir Thomas More (England's Lord High Chancellor): For what?

Alice More: He's dangerous!

William Roper (Son-in-law): For all we know he's a spy!

Margaret More (Daughter): Father, that man's bad!

Sir Thomas: There's no law against that!

William Roper: There is God's law!

Sir Thomas: Then let God arrest him!

Alice More: While you talk he's gone!

Sir Thomas: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas: Yes!

Sir Thomas: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

Sir Thomas: This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Sir Thomas: Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Sketch from A Man For All Seasons about Sir Thomas More from What Delicate Balance? by John Loeffler.

Signed in silence

I watched on social media yesterday as word got round that the President of Nigeria had signed into law the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill (SSMPB) which had wide ranging powers to persecute and prosecute Nigerian citizen homosexuals and their sympathisers with threats of jail sentences of up to 14 years. [The Nation] [Wikipedia] [SSMPB (PDF)]

There is no point dwelling on the minutiae of that law, because there is a wider issue at play that we fail to recognise can be the unintended consequence of this type of law.

At no time was Nigeria under the threat of sweeping homosexual matrimony invading the sanctity of temple or place of worship for solemnisation, the majority of the population is well schooled in the revulsion of homosexuality from a sexual perspective, that they would willingly gather in mobs to lynch in the name of whatever deity they worship to mete out just justice without repercussion.

Stones in hand

At tip of the tongue and with means to act, they have chapter and verse from any religious tome of your choosing to commit the homosexual instantly to the abyss of infernal perdition. We need no encouragement in what is innately our natural disposition.

Homosexuals in Nigeria have no pride marches, society takes no pride in them, the family can’t have pride for them and in essence the person so afflicted in the minds of the assailant is not proud of who they are. They are stuck in labyrinthic closets or acquiescing to societal pressures fulfilling the rites of passage of marriage whilst satisfying a deeper need on the down low.

Yet, we have a law for what does not exist, which can never get popular and has little chance in this generation of becoming acceptable, in our statute books. An exercise in legislative indolence signed off to the hysterical mesmerisation of the people who think this is the best thing the government ever did.

Now they've come

They have come for the homosexual with the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill and because many are not homosexual they like the crowd that gathered at the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate have been excited by the leaders to cry out loud until they are hoarse – Crucify them!

One cannot be oblivious of history, for the persecution of the minority, the different, the castigated, the powerless and the other has allowed tyranny to lay hold until there is none to stand true for justice.

The words of Martin Niemöller come to mind in all its contexts and ramifications and for this piece, may I prefix it without necessarily changing the whole premise to the Nigerian setting, because there would be people to eventually fill those cadres of offence when sufficient momentum is gained for a new moral law on dressing, on sayings, on actions and much else, in what is becoming a sham of a democracy.

First they came for the Gays, and I did not speak out—because I was not gay.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

No business of the state

For the state has deviated from civil law to moral codes as much of the debate that fuelled support for this law had nothing to do with civil coexistence of the diversity of humanity and human nature, but some selective affinity to Mosaic rules designed specifically to differentiate the Israelites of the times of Exodus from other tribes. I digress on this essential matter of conscience above all else.

Where this becomes a problem is whilst in general, we have agreement amongst religious beliefs, we have no consonance of systems of worship and essentially do not believe the same.

For each person to their level of adherence can decide that they subscribe to their understanding of God’s law to do whatever they will or think is God’s mind about issues, even if others do not so subscribe to that system of beliefs or believe in any of that stuff. Yes, to some, stuff is article of faith and to others, it is just stuff.

Thinking for ourselves

When a man suggests he is only answerable to God or his religion, the state loses the power to provide the impartiality of justice to all its citizenry. For God’s law when taken to the street imposes sanction without appeal, empowering abuse without redress, yet self-justifies the presumably self-appointed custodians of those laws.

This was well argued in the submission of Lord Justice Laws on the issue of separation of religion and state.

“The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.”

In other words, these laws whilst appearing to be founded on firm moral principle, they offer no protections for the people in a democracy when they are caught on the wrong side of it, either by reason of being criminalised or by the abuse of process to persecute the innocent.

Blog - The case for State law over religious guidance

Arrest him, he’s homosexual

This takes us back to the sketch at the beginning of this blog on the use of the law, the misuse of the law and the abuse of authority.

The Lord High Chancellor had his family appeal to his sentiment to arrest a man because he was dangerous, and in terms, the homosexual in Nigeria is deemed dangerous not for anything that affects us personally, but for the satisfaction of our moral sentiments.

And by God’s law in the arguments proffered when debating the bill in the legislature, we have created something to ensnare people by criminalising the bedroom of others who do not subscribe to what is our norm or our normality.

In the voices of Margaret More, Alice More and William Roper, we seek to persecute, prosecute, impugn, damage and criminalise deploying every fallacy available to justify our stance (against everything different, unusual, misunderstood, reviled, especially homosexuality), by appealing to every sentiment to suborn the objective assessment of the facts, but there stands amongst us a Sir Thomas More.

This is a very bad law

He brings down every fallacy from hysteria to tradition, upholding the primacy of man’s law and its purpose for justice and fairness to all. For our wider humanity which easily finds ways to exacerbate difference and punish the same is better served in finding unity of purpose, in according fundamental human rights to each existence, to every expression and to the pursuit of happiness.

The Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill whichever way you want to look at it is a bad law, it is odious, inhuman, unconscionable, contemptible and celebratory of the worst of our human expression in the name of some presumed morality – the fight for its repeal has begun.

Every Nigerian homosexual in the 21^st Century should have a right to exist and thrive in their own country, fulfilling their potential without hindrance of the state through the criminalisation of who they are.

For all the sentiment we might have about what is the reason for homosexuality, science and psychology has gone beyond that to prove it is natural, sticking to the age-old religious acceptance that the earth is flat does not change the scientific fact that the earth is round, and it is the earth that revolves around the sun rotating on its axis to make night and day. 

I stand for the diversity of humanity expression, the protection of the rights of all, similar, different, powerless, powerful, heterosexual, asexual, celibate and homosexual, old and young, the many and the few. Repeal the law!

Other notes

Blog - Human Rights Day 2011: Gay Rights are Human Rights

Blog - Homosexuality in Nigeria - Condemning bigots who seek death

Blog - Editorial: Legislating for the Unforeseeable of Same-Sex Marriage

Facts About Homosexuality and Mental Health - UCDavis

Homosexuality – Wikipedia

Blog - Decade Blogs - Editi Effiong - Dear religious people, let's kill all the gay people

Opinion: How we are losing the #ChildNotBride debate to Senator Yerima

Game, Set and Match to Yerima

We are swiftly losing the plot and the battle in the debate with regards to putting up our girls for marriage as espoused and promoted by Senator Sani Yerima.

In all the media appearances that the veritable ex-governor and Sharia law advocate has attended, he has literally wiped the floor clean with all his inquisitors demonstrating a thorough grasp of the constitutional issues that allow him the pleasures he enjoys without moral reflection because he believes he is in the right.

Meanwhile with our moral indignation, passion and disdain of the man and his views, we have deployed emotion, celebrity and ignorance against a well-prepared, media-savvy, knowledgeable and formidable force of personality who once again has successfully run rings round us.

Building an unassailable profile

Sani Yerima is a problem, a developing problem with a growing followership, media profile and international recognition; the little leaven of yeast he was years ago has slowly but surely leavened the whole dough, like the little venom of a poisonous snake has fully paralysed us in debate with neurotoxins presenting death.

We are never going to win this debate if we continue to entertain Senator Sani Yerima as the clown, more so, where we must tackle him requires proper intellectual engagement of people who have studied and understood the core legal, religious and socio-economic matters that underpin what makes these practices thrive without sanction.

Atrocious figureheads ruining the plot

This is no time to roll out figurehead celebrities oblivious of data and facts debating and contributing like airheads, adding fuel to the odious glare that is giving Senator Yerima the courage to state his case on the international media without apology.

Without doubt, the man is smart, he also has amazing political nous because what he has successfully done is make his own personal interpretation of issues the core and contention of the debate; once we have absented ourselves from the core objectives to toe this line, well walked by him and less known by us, we have basically lost before the first word is spoken.

The pimping media

The media also have to excoriated about how this debate has been derailed from giving more prominence to the protection of the rights of the child from entering adulthood long before they are due just because some men have found a propensity to satisfy their evil lusts with the innocence of kids.

Yes, the media, the houses and the personalities, for ratings and involvement latching onto the notoriety of the reprehensible have not furthered the debate for the cause of humanity and what is right, but have become voyeurs of comment and counter-comment, happily thinking they are providing a platform for debate when they are no better than pimps providing board for prostitute and punter to meet.

Respect the man

We will only begin to tackle Senator Yerima properly, when we humbly respect that he is knowledgeable, informed, equipped, savvy, smart and intelligent, it means we also have polish up our act by ensuring we match each of these qualities with people who have superior intellect on all the matters constitutional, religious and otherwise – we have many, prominent of whom is Maryam Uwais who gave a well-written submission on this matter here.

Senator Yerima and Constitutional Review – Maryam Uwais

We will never be equipped for the heavy lifting of radical change in national consciousness which some people term the reorientation of the citizenry, and in my view that will take generations of re-schooling, if we have not been exercised in lesser issues like Child Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, Maternal Mortality, Rights of the Woman and the Child, Education, Health to greater social and infrastructure issues as Power, Resource Management, Corruption or even Homosexuality - We have to work with the discreet, and individual parts of the sum to make the whole product, the whole is too unwieldy to tackle, it is a leviathan of a problem.

This David is beating us fair and square

There is much to do, but we have to start with the basic sketches, pencil marks, brush strokes and composition before we get the big picture of where we want Nigeria to be.

The Big Picture is not a screenprint, it will be slow and painstaking, one generation working with the next and preparing the one after to take over reinforcing and building on the foundations laid down now; it is not a chicken or egg matter, but a chicken and egg coexistence because the future we so desire might not come to light until the lifetime time of the grand-chick, just as dreams of our fathers before might only be realised in the lifetimes of our grandchildren, we have to build continuity into the struggle and survival of humanity for the good, the better and the best.

One final note of warning, “Those who treat their adversaries with derision are soon humiliated in the theatre of battle. Think Goliath and David.” It goes without saying that Senator Yerima is playing the part of David too well for the Goliath of our disdain to realise that the stone of Islam in the sling of the Senator’s good aim is the death of Goliath and the end of our side of the story or the protection of girls who should not be brides.

Related reading

Nigeria: Senator Yerima's Child Is a Bride on Friday the 6th of September 2013

Nigeria: On Child Marriage, The Perception Drives the Debate

Nigeria: Senator's teenage marriage is lawful though reprehensible

Nigeria: Senator's defiance makes Sharia Law untenable

The case for State law over religious guidance

Opinion: Overruling Extremist Opposition to Expert Medical Opinion

The Blood Transfusion Debate Again

Almost six years ago, I could not find the words to describe and condemn the needless death of someone by reason of extreme religious beliefs where a simple medical procedure would have saved life, avoided sorrow and provided essential parental and matrimonial succour to the children and the husband of the victim. [AkinBlog]

Then a 22-year old having given birth to twins had lost so much blood that she needed a transfusion but because she was a Jehovah’s Witness, she and her husband refused treatment that could have saved her life, she exsanguinated.

Against Expert Medical Opinion

Recently, this issue of religious belief attempting to override good medical practice came to the courts in Northern Ireland where a judge decided that a man with severe learning abilities had the right by reason of not being able to understand the consequences of adhering to a belief system that could endanger his life to be protected by the state. [CourtsNI]

He was to undergo a number of dental surgery proceedings that had outcomes that might require the use of blood products that Jehovah’s Witnesses proscribe, particularly, blood transfusions – in my 2007 blog, I did suggest that it was pragmatic to obtain blood transfusions from a patient’s bloodline.

Personal Consent is Fundamental

Crucial to this decision was that, he “is not capable of consenting to his own medical treatment” due to “a history of global developmental delay of unknown aetiology”, his mother was seeking the right to decide on his behalf positing that, he “seems to enjoy attending church and has positive social contact as a result”, thereby, he is as much bound by the belief systems she espouses to be accorded the strictures that constitute the dogma of the sect. [Wikipedia]

The judge, based his views on the ECHR suggesting ‘At least two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) were relevant, the judge noted: the second, which guarantees the right to life, and the third, which outlaws "inhuman and degrading" treatment. But legal precedents indicated that a treatment aimed at preserving life could not be considered cruel.’ [Economist]

Anachronisms of Ancient Thought in Modern Times

Now, whilst a religious sect might have scriptural basis for whatever belief systems they espouse, as the Economist notes, “transfusion for medical reasons did not exist in Biblical times; this is one of the many difficulties that arise when codes of ethics that were devised for life in the pre-modern desert are applied to the 21st century.”

I could not have put that better in determining the reasonableness of context, application and perspective necessary for a common-sense decisions today.

The conflict between treatment necessary to preserve life and the religious freedom to determine whether to take such treatment should not exist if the person concerned is able to comprehend and use the information under medical guidance to appreciate the consequences of their decision.

Incapacity Defaults to Medical Opinion

That is usually catered for in an Advance Health Care Directive also known as a living will which “is a set of written instructions that a person gives that specify what actions should be taken for their health, if they are no longer able to make decisions due to illness or incapacity.” [Wikipedia]

However, this requires the person be full aware and capable of making the decisions in the directive prior to incapacity. Where the directive is challenged, it there is precedent where the judge has denied the execution of the Power of Attorney, requiring the patient be able to decide for themselves, failing which the law will side with expert medical opinion. [RTE]

An Uneasy Compromise

I am wont to believe that the Jehovah’s Witnesses exhibit an unsavoury kind of religious fundamentalism and extremism based on teachings and new interpretation of Scripture dating back only to 1870, even if they aver that they are “a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity.” [Wikipedia]

Much as I will like a situation where religious beliefs do not overcome reasonable medical intervention, the Economist ends their piece with this – “a consensus is emerging that people of more-or-less sound mind can, if they so choose, put their lives at risk by refusing certain treatments; but they cannot impose that risk on dependants who for one reason or another cannot decide for themselves.”

It is an uneasy compromise but the decision not to follow medical advice or extricate oneself from procedure by reason of conscience must be made by the individual concerned and should never be transferred to someone else.