News
The scourge of rape! By Lateef Adewole
The Insight by Lateef Adewole
The recent incidents of rape and murder of many innocent ladies have brought back the seriousness of the matter to the front burner in the past two weeks. There has been rage over the recent case of the 22-year-old Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, a fresher in the University of Benin, who was raped and murdered in a church where she went to read. The authority is still investigating it.
Few days after, the case of another student at IITA, Ibadan, Barakat Bello, 19, who was raped and killed inside her father’s house, was reported. Then another in the same area, a post-graduate student at the University of Ibadan was raped and killed in her apartment. She was also pregnant. Then there was a 12-year-old who was gang-raped by four men in Lagos.
Several other cases across the country have been in the news lately. The man who raped his daughters, a serial rapist who was arrested after 40 rapes, the child who raped his grandmother, men who defiled babies and on and on. These are just those that made it to the news. There are countless others which could not by deliberate cover up or remoteness of where it happened or lack of access to the media.
Protests erupted in some cities against rape. In the heat of it all, I asked a lawyer friend on a platform we belong if there could also be rape between a husband and his wife. He is yet to respond to me as I write. So, in the course of preparing for this article, I found the definition of rape in accordance with the Nigerian constitution. It defined rape under section 357 as a man having forceful canal knowledge of a woman.
Barakat Bello was raped and murdered in her home
From the above, I realised that addressing the issue of rape became problematic from its view by the law. Based on this, only a man rapes a woman. While that is the most prevalent of cases, there are rapes of men by women, men by other men, and women by women. Some days ago, a video of a lady sucking the “private” of a little boy surfaced online. She was reported to have been arrested. This casualness of the law about rape could have worsened the situation over the years.
It will surprise many that the outrage we saw after Uwa’s case will soon fizzle out. Was that not how Busola’s case generated uproar in July last year like all other similar previous cases, only to die down sooner than later. She has been the only one damning the consequences and pursuing her case since then, except of course, with the support of her husband, Timi Dakolo. Has the person involved not moved on with his life? This is the travail of rape victims.
In Nigeria, we shout and cry when an incident happens. We demand justice, which is rarely gotten. However, all that is like treating the symptoms of an ailment, rather than the root cause. We demand that a rapist be apprehended and punished appropriately, which in itself, is an Herculean task due to the encumbrance of the processes involved to prove rape cases in our courts. We then go back to sleep without looking further and or deeper.
A bill to castrate any rapist apart from serving life jail term was presented and debated in the national assembly recently but our lawmakers rejected it. I am still trying to fathom their reasons. I do not want to believe they have any personal concerns or trying to protect any interest. The levity with which rape cases have been handled for years make rapists to escape justice and have emboldened them the more. They have now graduated from just raping their victims to killing them. How more horrendous can the situation get?
There is no justification whatsoever for anyone to rape another. With more focus on men raping the women, no reason could be acceptable. The location, age, appearance, dressing, relationship or attitude of any girl, lady or woman, can never be used as justifications for rape. It is the rapists who are the problems. They are just animals. Otherwise, what could have caused the rape of babies who are just days or months old? What could have caused raping of old women of over 80 years? What could have caused a father to rape his own daughters? Nothing but animalistic instincts. And such animals (rapists) should be severely punished for their crimes.
That said but there is an elephant in the room. Like I earlier mentioned, we tend to focus all our attention and energy on outcomes, addressing the symptoms while leaving the root causes of rape. While individuals who commit these atrocious acts are solely responsible for them, all of us collectively as a society are vicariously culpable. Why do I say this?
Historically, rape has existed as long as time. However, the cases of rape in the past were not as preponderance, virulent and vicious as we now have it. And I want to focus on Nigeria and Africa in this article. In the olden days, anyone found to have committed rape was severely punished. He could be ostracised and banished from that community forever. He family and generations yet unborn could bear that shame. So, people are very careful and when such happened, it is decisively dealt with. It is seen as a taboo.
Unfortunately, the coming of foreign culture which infiltrated our African society, eroded our own God-given cultures and values. Ours were dumped and we embraced strange ones in the name of civilisation and religions. This had consequences. In the process, our way of lives changed. The way we eat, dress, relate with one another and all sorts, changed.
But while we embraced this, we were never prepared or ready for the attendant repercussions. We wanted to eat our cake and keep it. The morality and values that used to be our guide and protective compass changed. Raising children become another thing. Children were raised by the society in those days. Any elderly person anywhere can punish any child from anywhere for wrongdoings but that is not the case now. Parents now over-pamper their children and indulge them in their misdemeanors in the name of “love”. Imagine parents who go to fight teachers in their children’s schools for justifiably punishing their wards? What kind of lessons are such parents teaching their kids?
We all have introduced immoralities into our homes. The kind of lewd videos and movies shown on our televisions at home, which our children have access to, makes immoralities to be ingrained in them. They grow up so filled with erotic thoughts and feelings, many times at tender age. What about the musics? The lyrics now promote illicit sex. That is what sells. The R&B, hip pop, etc, are all filled with glorification of immoralities. And the society sees nothing wrong in them. Schools, including elementary and secondary, play such musics for students during their parties. Their parents join them in dancing to such music during such parties and in their homes.
Senate says it is working on a bill that will protect rape victims
Let me not start with the video shoots of these music. They have not started until girls begin to dance completely naked or half-nude. They display and shake their breasts and buttocks to taunt viewers. These music videos also play on our televisions at homes. What about the so called modelling and beauty pageantries? Majority of them are official promotion of immoralities.
The society condones and promotes female nudity. Organisations, businesses and governments sponsor shows that portray and encourage immoralities. How many shows can we count that do not have nude content? Big Brother Africa and Big Brother Naija should top them in our clime. What exactly are the benefits of these shows more than promoting immoralities, nudity and sex? Advertisements are only made using half naked girls and ladies, even when such products have absolutely nothing to do with feminity. Billboards all over the place display nude or scantily clad females.
It amounts to hypocrisy for anyone to continue to justify all of these as “human rights or freedom”. While all these are unAfrican but we have decided to imbibe them, why do we frown at their consequences? In the Western world where we copied all these from, such “freedom” does not end at dressing alone. There are many things that they also allowed but we tend to avoid here. Children/ teenagers freely dating and having sex, buying and selling of sex through prostitution, live-in-lovers, divorces, abortions, bearing children out of wedlock, etc, are many things we frown at in Africa but are no big deal in many western countries.
As human beings who are exposed to all kinds of erotic sights, a pent up sensual feelings with restrictions on avenues to express them, bring out the animals in some people who have no self control. On one hand, we want to be free to do anyhow and on the other, we want to be “religious”.
So, all these abnormalities that have taken over our society need to be addressed. Everyone focuses on raising good girls/women while boys are not given similarly important adequate education and attention. They grow up not knowing the value of treating women with utmost respect and care. When a rapist commits his atrocity, society questions the girl, subject her to ridicule, stigmatise her, instead of focusing on the man and ensure he is punished.
There are influential parents who shield their sons from punishment when they commit rape to protect their names after they have raised their sons badly.
So, if we truly want to see the end of this rape scourge or reduce it drastically, it is time to stop being hypocritical and take a holistic approach to solving it. All these avenues where women feminity are exploited need to be addressed. Feminists cannot claim to fight for women emancipation but play possum or look the other way where all these women exploitations are happening. They should fight against women being used as sex objects. Women do these things out of their own free wills most times.
The difficulty in the process of bringing a rapist to justice makes it discouraging for many to report it to the law enforcement agents. The burden of proof is often overwhelming to the victim, especially when it was committed long ago. Because of this, many culprits have escaped punishment. The corruption in our system both in the security circle and the judiciary make it worse. These two were rated as being the most corrupt institutions in Nigeria by Transparency International (TI). Hardly can ordinary citizens with no wherewithal, get their assailants punished appropriately. It is a shame.
Stigmatisation is another big huddle. Instead of the society to stand with a rape victim, they often shame and stigmatise her. This makes many victims to suffer in silence and not come out or to report it. This also emboldened the criminals, the result of which we can see now.
One thing that must also be mentioned is that, lying about rape against an innocent man for whatever reason is as bad as the action of a rapist itself. We have heard of girls/ladies who claimed they just wanted to punish men for jilting them or for other reasons, so, they accused the boys/men of rape. Apart from its evil against fellow human, it also makes the real rape looks like joke.
In all, while it has been established, the importance of ensuring that any rapist gets punished adequately for their crimes to give victim closure and serve as deterrent to others, the exigencies of addressing the root causes of rape cannot be overemphasised. It is time to look beyond simply demanding for punishment if we sincerely want to see the end of rape in our society.
Our values and morals must and should be reviewed. Are the kids, youths and young adults having proper upbringing? What family values are we instilling in them? What trainings are the boys receiving about how to to treat girls and ladies? What morals are we teaching our daughters with regards to their social lives? What is the society doing about promotion of nudity? Are we going to pretend as if all is normal and everything is okay? What does government want to do about contents which are broadcasted into our homes? What of those of the music and music videos? Will government continue to look the other way while these thrash fill the airwaves? Are we all going to pretend that all is well?
All these questions and many more, need to be individually and collectively dealt with by all of us as a society, if we want to genuinely tackle this menace of rape. Our lawmakers should not shy away from their responsibilities of amending the laws against rape to give stiffer punishments and make the road to justice easier for victims. We are all guilty one way or another. We are all culpable.
May God continue to protect and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
Lateef Adewole is a political analyst and social commentator can be reached by email lateefadewole23@gmail.com or via WhatsApp +2348020989095 and @lateef_adewole on Twitter
