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

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

Bad interview techniques

The death of Sir David Frost this morning brought into stark relief the dearth of television interviewing scholarship and skill in Nigerian media.

Prominent amongst the recollections about Sir David Frost will be his interviews of President Richard Nixon post the Watergate scandal, beyond that, he was known for getting to chat to prominent personalities and teasing out information and detail that will never be revealed if he had not done his research and placed his questions with skill.

Other interviewers with my English bias of that class will be Sir Michael Parkinson, Jeremy Paxman, Stephen Sackur, Larry King, John Humphrys and recently Piers Morgan – these are people Nigerian interviewers should study and with a sense of courage and boldness be able to address the powerful without fear to elicit facts rather than have rings run round them as they cower in fawning obsequiousness.

The debauchery of Yerima

One such notorious personality that has not only run rings round media interviewers in Nigeria but appeared smarter, articulate and more prepared for anything slung at him is Senator Sani Yerima, the one-time governor of Zamfara State in Nigeria and the proud figurehead cum advocate of prepubescent matrimony.

At 53, the man has 28 children and has satisfied himself with a full complement of wives; four at a time with decreasing age of consummation that fell to the age of 13 with anEgyptian girl in 2010, having divorced another teenager wife of a couple of years to make way for this one.

Now, nothing in the laws of Nigeria as they stand makes what he did illegal, much as it is morally reprehensible to say the least and he has been recently in the news with regards to a constitutional amendment that had nothing to do with child marriage but once it was misinterpreted and misconstrued to pertain to that, we almost had a constitutional crisis that led to the public perception and campaign labelled #ChildNotBride.

A child marriage to stop

On the 6^th of September, Sani Yerima intends to give the hand of his 16-year old daughter in marriage to someone yet to be determined by the attendant news reports.

Being a Nigerian Senator, Sani Yerima is a man of great means and wealth, having also been a governor without vouching for or against his honesty, it goes without saying that he knows the need and value of education and he is enlightened enough to do what is right without resorting to the bogeyman of religion to press his case.

We must agree that a man of the Senator’s status really has no justification taking his 16-year old daughter half-educated out of school to fulfil a marital pact under any circumstances including religion, even if he is constitutionally warranted to do such if he deems it fit.

Girls have rights too

It goes without saying that the girl at 16 who will not have completed her secondary school education will be put at a lifelong disadvantage of not being able to be of independent means if this union should fail and she is left with dependants she has to fend for.

If we cannot have senior politicians stand up for the rights of girls in the 21^st Century where our global village exposes both boy and girl to challenges that require a really good education to get ahead at anything, then that is unfortunate.

If the girl were kept in school until she finished university, she will at most be 24 years of age and 24 is not too bad an age for a Muslim girl with an overly religious father to find a man, get married and fulfil of matrimonial duties along with having a sense of achievement and independence in the community in which she exists.

What to do?

We need to place a greater value on our girls to ensure they are not commoditised as bargaining chattels for pacts of marriage and the satisfaction of the propensity for paedophiliac lusts of lewd old men like their fathers.

I do not know if this marriage in 5 days can be stopped but this provides a socio-economical angle to the debate on child marriage moving it away from the issue of religion and the lascivious lewdness of old men sampling the virginity of girls for their sexual pleasure to the primary and fundamental interests of the child.

Our right to protect girls

Any man can choose whatever beliefs he wants and use them to his satisfaction, but the state has a duty above any belief system to protect the child from exploitation, abuse and the termination of opportunity to gain the basic tools for independence such as a full education where the means exist to cover such.

On that basis alone, that marriage should be not be contracted by the force of moral responsibility, an injunction or civil intervention, this kind of impunity must have an end and who better to be made an example of than Senator Sani Yerima.

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.

Nigeria: No Country for Vulnerable Children

The regularity is inuring

Pastor accused of raping 12-year-old girl, I have read too many headlines like this in Nigerian newspapers that I have no more bothered to read the story, as if it is so commonplace, I am almost dangerously inured to it.

Something about this story was striking, in fact, too many things in this story meant a good 12 hours after reading it, I had this nagging feeling that I had to comment on the issue.

A vulnerable young girl had been brought over from the village, vulnerable in the sense that she was only two weeks in the city, she could speak neither the local language nor English and she was staying with her aunt besides the fact that she was just 12.

That a 12-year old could not speak a word of English in Nigeria in 2012 is the subject of another day, but it calls for serious discussion.

Groomed and raped

This was an Igbo girl in Yorubaland and besides her aunt, there was this neighbour, a Pastor who apparently is Yoruba who could also speak Igbo and so the conversation started where the Pastor began grooming the girl, lured her into the detached communal toilet, covered her mouth and raped her; by first sodomising her and then taking away her virginity.

Her aunt almost caught them in the act and upon inquiring of the girl, she learnt of what had happened and apparently immediately rushed the girl to hospital where she was examined and it was found that she had bruises to both her anal and virginal regions with sperm residue found in the vagina.

A victim to exculpate the criminal

The Pastor had however fled and in the process commenced an unconscionable damage limitation exercise that included stigmatising a vulnerable 6-year old girl who was labelled a witch by his church members; she was brutalised and paraded in public having been accused of bewitching the Pastor leading to his helplessly falling prey to being a rapist. This is no sarcasm; this is what the people really did believe.

This poor 6-year old girl was then left under the exorcist ministry of this rotten paedophile to be delivered of her witchcraft powers – the tale reads like a Steven King horror novel, only that there are real victims involved.

Interminable days

Meanwhile, it took two days after the rape of that child for her aunt to report the crime to the police and it took another two days for the Pastor to be apprehended. A couple of days later, the Pastor was released without charge into the community as if absolved because the courts were not in session to charge the man with any offence.

In fact, the charges were dropped by the police as they are wont to in cases like this, the most the perpetrator suffers is the demand that he defrays the hospital costs of the victim and the rotten paedophile is granted bail to return to the scene of the crime amongst other vulnerable persons where he can intimidate the witnesses and pervert the course of justice.

Now, the police are taking the heat for their lackadaisical attitude to this heinous paedophile criminality that they have suggested when the courts are back in session the paedophile pastor will be charged.

The dread of Syncretism

The spokesperson for the state police command is Ngozi Braide, a lady and I cannot say if she is a mother too, who was filled with as much indignation and rage as to acknowledge that the girl was raped and concluded with - “The pastor is in charge of a white garment church in the area. He will be charged with sodomy. He was released on bail because courts are not sitting but once courts resume, he will be charged.” Really? Just sodomy?

Herein is the big problem, African-initiated white garment churches have a brand of Syncretism that melds elements of animist and Shamanist belief systems with Christianity and it derives most of its doctrinal teachings from the Pentateuch, reciting the Psalms with the fieriness of people under altered states of consciousness, given to mass hysteria whilst believing in demonic possession, witchcraft and voodoo relieving people of their free moral agency.

The unpalatable sway the leaders of these sects hold over the community literally gives them criminal impunity and even in the face of compelling evidence, they are able to operate outside the ambit of the law for the fact that people fear them and whatever powers they might abuse to extricate themselves from criminal sanction.

We are embarrassed

The society at large is scandalised and embarrassed by incidents of paedophile criminality that they will rather sweep the matter under the carpet than agitate to have it prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The victims however receive no psychological help beyond medical examination to prove that the child has been violated and medical establishments do not take on the social responsibility burden of addressing the long term consequences of the sexual violation of minorities, we generally assume time eventually heals the pain and wipes out the memories of such events from the mind of the child.

Witchcraft stigmatisation

The poor child who was stigmatised as a witch might probably have had learning difficulties which the illiterate and ignorant may not understand, these helpless children especially if orphaned are ready brutalisation fodder for unscrupulously rotten religious leaders to mesmerise their flock into believing incredibly atrocious tales.

Injustice is compounded by evil under the guise of religion leaving child victims in their wake as if this is no country for children.

A grave injustice lingers

We need to re-school ourselves and begin to give the vulnerable a voice, the cause for justice for the victim must be paramount and above all allegiances no matter how deep – when a child is raped or stigmatised, it must become a compelling priority to see to it that all perpetrators, conspirators and accessories to that criminality are corralled and charged accordingly to ensure no other children suffer at the hands of these purveyors of reprehensible evil.

We can no more pretend that child sexual abuse does not occur amongst us and we should not be embarrassed to expose all those who tolerate it amongst us.

At the same time, we should be discerning of the fact that when a child is stigmatised as a witch, it is usually a distraction from other unspeakable evils and a smokescreen for contemptible deeds.

No child should ever be sacrificed on the altar of any belief system, no good can come out of brutalising the child either to save it or the community within which it lives, our dread for the supernatural must stop long before a hand is lifted against the child and reason prevail always.

It is time for children to feel safer in Nigeria.

Catholic Church pays off paedophile accusers

Tithes and Offerings

I have not been the most ardent adherent of Malachi's Gospel, just before the offertory in Church many a preacher has re-enacted the Garden of Gethsemane as pleadings become mendicancy and entreaty betrays desperation that the honesty, purity and spirituality of the message is lost to the quest for filthy lucre.

It is almost an in-joke to Nigerians that when a person opens a church, it is like opening a business where worshippers can be persuaded beyond stupefaction to part with the rewards of the sweat of their brow to fund the lavish lifestyle of the founder who must live and exude the excesses of the prosperity gospel.

But the people have kept the faith because beyond filling the House of God with food there is a promise to be fulfilled, the blessing that floods your beyond a deluge as God opens the windows of heaven - think Noah's flood of blessings and you had better have an ark to ride in.

Now, many might have their views about the work to which tithes and offerings are put to in the Church, I have never been involved in Church government or management, but there is no doubt that standard practices of auditable control are necessary lest the organisation falls fouls of the law.

The settlement

We now hear that the Roman Catholic Church and the one true Church according to a document that receives the blessing of Pope Benedictvs XVI (Another story) is through its Los Angeles Diocese settling child abuse claims to the tune of $660 million, just 6 short of the mark of the beast that should be emblazoned with a hot brand on the priests who have seriously abused the office, the trust, their calling and children.

People in positions of religious responsibility who hold moral sway over their communities and in whom too many repose trust to the point that they believe their children are safe in the company of religious tutelage only to find out that the child's innocence is stolen in sexual duress by trusted Father String Himup.

It is fine that the Church is paying up, but this would not repair damaged lives, it allows the Church to wipe the slate clean whilst not fully exposing to the law the extent of seriously criminal activity and the culpability of the clergy in conniving, concealing, condoning these acts when they should have been challenged - they were comfortable with harbouring and shielding addicted sociopathic unrepentant paedophiles who just happened to be priests.

Paedophiles they are

Unfortunately, paedophile is one word that has never been used to address the matter of Catholic priests abusing children and just to properly set our minds on the revulsion of these acts the definition of paedophilia in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object.

And now, the tithes and offerings of the faithful Catholic laity would pay to make child abuse less synonymous to paedophilia, over $2 billion has been paid out, this is seriously big business and money - No wonder religion remains definitely the opium of the people.