The colour of rape is the title of a short story in my book Nene And Other Stories published by Bookcraft. Rape is a beast attacking a less powerful being. Why is it that the poor in strength must die ‘to live’ and get justice? The Indian student called ‘India’s daughter’ dying 13 days after being raped and thrown out a moving bus is horrifying. All such boys’ or men’s evil plans and recordings for facebook coverage of such heinous acts says a lot about the social, family, institutional, medical, police and legal stigma, systems and structures in many countries involving black, white and yellow peoples i.e. worldwide. Naturally Nigeria is replete with similar episodes from the poor to the privileged, from disorganised to organised society and even police stations are involved in such violent abuse of uniform privilege. Kidnap by political thugs and ritualists for rape, ritual and other abuses in public transport are rife.
The dangers to female petty traders and hawkers are well documented but still young girls and even educated female bank officials are sent unaccompanied to ‘the male meat market’ i.e. the rooms, houses and offices of customers and clients to deliver wears from bread to requesting bank deposits and to collect money owed or promised often at a high price- rape. Does the girl or woman ordinarily want sex in those circumstances? Remember that non-consensual sex, we-did-not-agree-but-I-had-to-or-he-would-have-become-violent-or-denied-me-my-goods sex, even when not resisted sex, is also rape. The female should she be expected to die in order to prove beyond a doubt that she was raped. Prevention is better than cure as you cannot cure a rape victim. The memory is never erased by love or money but justice is a good start. But as any rape victim knows, a lawyer’s probing questions are almost as humiliating as the rape but even more public.
Prevention and successful prosecution includes proper, easily read and remembered numbering of taxis, okada, danfos and their drivers for easy identification, driver ID stuck to the back of driver’s seat so that back-seat passengers can identify the driver and vehicle ID which are all used to prevent sexual assault, robberies and other attacks in normal countries. What sexual excesses and crimes, lecturer-student, student-student, lecturer-lecturer, go unreported in our tertiary institutions? To quickly get a legal case from any rape that will stand up in court, the NMA, Nurses council and government police, health and legal ministries must ensure that the ‘International RAPE PROTOCOL’ is available and operational in clinics, hospitals, police stations and female and male prisons. Are medical students, nurses and police officers taught this protocol during undergraduate, tertiary, postgraduate and cadet training? Are sympathetic female police officers automatically chosen for investigation and interviews in rape cases?
All women politicians, perhaps this will be a useful use of so-called first ladies, civil servants, corporate women, women’s groups in and out of government and women NGOS should set aside their political and ethnic and religious differences and take a real constructive visible and vocal STAND AGAINST RAPE’ in the media and on the roads, putting ‘RAPE’ on the agenda. Beyond powerful rallies, banners, posters and television and radio talks a lot of education and preventive information strategies must be done by and to the male sectors of the country as they are the perpetrators. Specifically this should target male market boys, area boys, thugs, secondary schools, tertiary institutions, religious leaders targeting religious youth organisations and the targeting of male dominated government organs like the civil service, the armed forces, the police, customs, Civil Defence, FRSC and NGOS like Boy Scouts, Man O War, the Red Cross etc to educate firstly themselves and then targeted segments of the community. The citizens can be easily engaged through the use of slogans and songs in Nollywood and Nollysongs and even careful use of comedy and MCs at public promotional functions using local languages on the air. A neglected educational avenue is the multibillion naira poster commercial market. Posters can declare messages like ‘RAPE IS NOT OK, IT SHOULD BE 21 YEAR JAILABLE CRIME.’ ‘REPORT OFFENDERS.’ ‘DATE – DO NOT RAPE’. ‘LET HER ‘NO’ MEAN ‘NO’ TO YOU’. ‘HER ‘NO’ MEANS ‘NO’. ‘WHEN YOU RAPE –THERE IS NO ESCAPE’ ‘FROM YOUR CONSCIENCE AND THE COURT’. Imagine the local and global impact if such a variety of messages are adopted by advert gurus for corporations who make billions of advert stickers and posters daily like Coca Cola, Pepsi, MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Star, Gulder, Guinness, Malta, Maggi, etc and immediately include them in their advert material for campaigns.
The Nov/Dec 2012 repair the ‘holiday roads’ must be extended 12 months a year, as in normal countries. If Nigerian governments and contractors are too incompetent for rainy season work, they should quit and let another government come in or compress 12 months’ work into the dry season by double time work, day and night, with extra crews. Actually due to ‘incompetent mobilisation’ we only have three months a year to build Nigeria’s road network, so it will be 2080 that we get our East West Road and our second Niger Bridge, which governments have failed to deliver for over 30 years. I go don die!
Similarly, if FRSC claims its EMBER campaign a success, government should direct FRSC to conduct EMBER level of activities year-round to keep sanity on the roads. Start with an FRSC ‘UARY’ CAMPAIGN.
