Tag: Adoke

Nigerians have largely been silent of something very sinister unfolding all around the country. No thanks to the never-ending twists in the reality show that the N225 million armoured car purchase scandal has become.

It is the rage of the libidinous. Nothing and nobody is too young or old to be penetrated against their will. The near total absence of outrage over the daily reports of appalling sexual crimes is indicative of how brutalised and unfeeling we have become. We are now so desensitised that the things that ought to shock us we now take in our stride.

Senators gave a nodding acknowledgment the other day that something terrible was going on that needs to be addressed. They were hopping mad over reports of the rape last week of a two year old girl, Chinwendu Onwudiwe, by a police corporal in Mararaba, Nasarawa State, near Abuja.

Leading the chorus of outrage was Senator Helen Esuene (Akwa Ibom South) who pointed out sundry ways in which cruelty was being visited on babies. They were being kidnapped, abused and sold as commodities she said.

The other day a 50-year old ‘pastor’ – and I used the word advisedly as these days all sorts of characters parade themselves as ‘pastors’ – was arraigned for allegedly raping three school pupils at Mpape, Abuja.

The suspected rapist who is now standing trial before a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court is supposedly the overseer of a church and proprietor of school where the victims were students. The prosecutor told the court that this was not a case of a man succumbing to a moment of weakness, rather the accused violated the two seven-year-olds and the nine-year-old pupil at different times when they supposedly in the school learning.

If what the Abuja clergyman did is shocking, what transpired between two minors in Lagos is downright disturbing. A 14-year old boy has just been arrested for raping a nine-year-old girl to death! The deceased was said to have been assaulted over five times by her sex-crazed assailant in the Ikorodu area of the state.

Sometime last year Enugu State Governor, Sullivan Chime, was forced to address the press following shocking reports of young men in the Opi community of the state gang-raping women whose ages ranged from 60 to 80.

In the last few months litanies of cases of sexual violence have inundated the media. It’s as if a dam burst and suddenly all these outrages were coming out. We should be especially troubled because many rape cases go unreported as victims want to suffer in silence and avoid the stigma. This implies that the problem is deeper than we can imagine.

No type of rape is excusable – whether it involves a minor or two adults. But I am particularly troubled when I read of grown men forcing themselves on two-year olds. What on earth could be responsible for this? How on earth did we come to this point?

All around us the most despicable things are happening. People are kidnapping their fellow human beings and receiving a ransom before setting them free. In some cases they kill the hapless victims even after getting paid.

People are killing their fellows with a view to using them in money-making rituals. We live in the age of the internet and digital television and yet in so many ways our people are still being seduced by superstitious illogic.

Something is badly broken in this society and until we fix it nothing will work in Nigeria. We can call a thousand national conferences they will come to nothing if we don’t sort out the basic things.

At the root of what is unfolding now is the fact that we no longer hold anything dear. Nothing is sacred, trust has disappeared. We no longer have a concept of what is right or wrong. You see it every day on the streets. The man who sits patiently in his car waiting for the light to turn soon begins to question his sanity when he sees everyone else jumping the light, or driving against traffic.

We have lost every sense of the shameful and dishonourable. That is why two people in high office can shake hands on deal only for one party to repudiate it without batting an eyelid.

In a society where parents actively fund the participation of their children in examination malpractices, it is no surprise that 40-year olds are sating themselves on babies.

In some other society it could be argued that these sordid sexual crimes are the direct result of an absence of moral teaching. That cannot be said about this country. The nation is virtually sagging under the weight of churches and mosques. The airwaves are saturated with religious noise but very little spirituality. There is so much spouting of that which is Godly, while clearly the fear of God has taken flight in their lives of those generating the cacophony.

We cannot deny that exposure to the internet and modern technology exposes a society to all sorts of influences like pornography that brings out the worst in both young and old. Still, the insidious influence of technology does not tell the whole story. It is a cocktail of things that have done us in.

If ever there was a candidate for shock therapy it is Nigeria. We need to be jolted back to our senses. Psychologists and sociologists can study the unfolding phenomenon and provide more scientific and coherent explanations as to what rape is on the increase. But we don’t need anyone to tell us that when adults are running around violating babies, that society’s moral sickness has plumbed new depths.

What is to be done? The change we hanker after is not going to come from outer space. Special breeds of pure aliens are not going to descend on Abuja to rescue us from the dissolute crew presently in charge. We must still look to the few who retain some modicum of sanity among the elite to lead that rebirth.

A good place to start is by making people understand that when they go off the rail, they will pay a steep price. A major difference between Nigeria and some other countries is their willingness to enforce their laws. Their citizens are human just like us – subject to the same passions and weaknesses. But the vast majority of them know that there are certain lines that cannot be crossed. Here, all those lines have become blurred.