Tag: vulnerable

ON the day he was arraigned in court in Bayelsa, the man accused of abducting the then 13-year-old Ese Oruru exuded calmness and confidence. No one knows whether the composure of the accused, Inuwa Dahiru, more popularly called Yunusa or Yinusa, was prompted by what he believes to be his innocence or whether he simply couldn’t grasp the weight of the crimes alleged against him. Or perhaps he was too young and idealistic to care. When the story of the abduction and forced conversion of Miss Oruru first broke, the impression noised in many quarters was that Mallam Dahiru was probably in his 30s taking paedophilic advantage of a very young, devout and impressionable southern Christian girl just clocking teenage. Soon, the alleged abductor, whose photograph was yet to be published anywhere, was made out as a 28-year-old man. Eventually, when one newspaper spoke with his father, the elderly Dahiru revealed that his son was 25 years old. Shortly before the suspect was dragged to Abuja for interrogation, some newspapers disclosed that he was actually 22 years old. Then finally, on his charge sheet, the prosecuting authorities managed to transform him, according to a newspaper report, into an 18-year-old teenager.
Nothing exemplifies the exasperating complexity of this controversial case as the manner in which Mallam Dahiru became progressively younger in the space of a few weeks. One or two newspapers had late last year presented the news as a case of elopement involving an older Hausa trader, who was also a tricycle operator, and a younger and outgoing Urhobo girl living in Yenagoa with her parents. At the time, whatever crime was insinuated into the escapade was believed to be mitigated by the adventurous willingness of the two so-called lovebirds to travel to Kano for an idyllic existence. The police, however, faced a conundrum separating the wheat from the chaff. But by late February, the story had become a definitive one of abduction, clash of cultures and religious bigotry in which the police and Kano’s emirate and religious authorities were complicit. The matter was compounded by pussyfooting police hierarchies, from the Bayelsa Command to the Kano Command, and disapprovingly thence to the Police Headquarters in Abuja.
Though there were too many missing pieces in the story when it took on force in February, the news nonetheless went viral locally and internationally, lathered by emotive reactions all round, from what was alleged to be a complicit Kano Emirate authority, specifically the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, to what police authorities in Abuja feared were dithering Kano Police officers, and finally to the state’s religious authorities, the Sharia Commission, and the religious police, the Hisbah. It was tough for a dispassionate analysts to navigate the treacherous waters of the alleged abduction. Indeed, it was safer for everyone who mulled over the story to simply conclude that the accused, Mallam Dahiru, being true to the northern type, forcibly took Miss Oruru from her parents, perhaps through hypnosis or other superstitious means, converted her against her will to Islam with the connivance of typically northern Jihadists, had carnal knowledge of an underage girl, and put her in the family way.
But by the time the legal fireworks will have settled, the abduction story may quake with doubt, as Mallam Dahiru himself hinted on the day he was charged in court. Miss Oruru’s stories, including how she got to Kano, and her relationship with the suspect, will indeed be put to the test, destabilised by its numerous gaps. What will not be threatened, irrespective of how old those involved in the saga are, is that the young girl left Bayelsa without parental consent, and the sex between the two, whether it was consensual and predated the alleged abduction, as Mallam Dahiru argued, or was coerced as the victim’s mother suggested, was between an older man and a minor. In the weeks ahead more light will be shed on the story and the public’s mood will doubtless fluctuate as the story ebbs and flows between facts and fiction.
The story and the ensuing court case will once again offer Nigeria the opportunity to grapple with the dark areas of national life which it has preferred to downplay for decades. If the country’s leaders appreciate the complexity of the issues involved, they will see it as an opportunity to take another look at the political, cultural and religious fissures distorting development and jeopardising ethnic and religious amity in the country. The fissures are indeed worrisome, and the periodic eruptions they have triggered over the decades should instruct Nigerians that living in denial is not an option. For instance, when the Kano State Shariah Commission orchestrated the sequestration and conversion of Miss Oruru to Islam despite her age, they easily played into the hands of those who suggest that at bottom some northern public officials unthinkingly harbour destructive jihadist instincts, which they are eager to indulge in in flagrant disregard to the country’s constitution and without a care as to its disruptive, divisive and incendiary potential.
Those who masterminded the said conversion also give the impression they are a law unto themselves and, if Kano State Government’s denial of knowledge of the Oruru case is to be believed, do not report to anyone. It may be time to set out exactly how local laws and edicts relate to the constitution in a secular society, and what level of deference to traditional and religious authorities law enforcement agents can demonstrate.
Even if parental control was lax in the Oruru case, as many commentators have argued, and the Child Rights Act is yet to be domesticated in many states, especially in the North, it may be time to examine afresh the difficult and complex attitude in these parts toward sex. That attitude, to put it mildly, is deeply troubling. Except Mallam Dahiru’s age can be truly established to be 18 as claimed in the charge sheet and by his lawyer, thereby narrowing the psychological and physiological divide between Miss Oruru and the accused, sex with minors is rather more pervasive than many care to acknowledge. Former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani, idiosyncratically lent political and religious weight to the disturbing trend of viewing sex as an epicurean pastime, with the procurer of sex almost completely detached from the object of sex, akin to what obtains in the animal kingdom. The way the world views sexual preferences is morphing considerably; who can tell whether in time paedophilia would not become lawful just as gay relationships, marijuana use, and other habits the world frowned at many decades ago have managed to compel the obliteration of barriers?
Not only will there never be a consensus on the topic of sex as far as many religions and cultures are concerned, with spatial differences manifesting in disturbing hues, the issues of divorce, rape, marriage — whether monogamy, polygamy, polyandry or gay union — will, with the aid of technological advancement, increasingly elicit fundamental changes in the people’s attitude to sex in ways never anticipated. Younger people have access to pornographic media unlike at any other time in human history, and are in consequence altering their behaviour, if not their biology, along clearly hedonistic lines. Crazy selfies, sexting, not to talk of lowering the age of consent, for which the laws and sometimes religions may be compelled to play ignoble catch-up, have been thrown into the dangerous mix. Mallam Dahiru suggests he had had sex with Miss Oruru even before they travelled to Kano. It is not yet clear whether the victim will be put in the dock, nor how it will established the accused is telling the truth. However, teen and even pre-teen sex, including child grooming for sex, are more rampant than many believe. The whole thing is a crazy obsession.
The constitution and the laws of the land can to some extent help Nigeria make sense of the problems associated with sexual and amorous relationships, notwithstanding the cultural differences between the North and South of Nigeria. But they will in the long run prove ineffective in regulating sexual preferences, including lowering the age limit of sexual experience. The problem is uniquely human. With the ubiquitous availability of mobile and explicit images on various media platforms, the availability of a whole pharmacy of drugs and aphrodisiacs employed to push sex beyond unimaginable frontiers and inhibitions, and a cornucopia of shifting attitudes to sex — lawful or not — unmitigated by ethics of any kind or origin, there will be more stories like that of Mallam Dahiru and Miss Oruru, if not worse. It is not for nothing that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution in which both man and woman — not just woman, as is often portrayed — are customers.
The Ese-Yunusa abduction trial will likely peter out into fatuity, of course after some salacious details have been revealed. Perhaps the SUV, and the identities of the accompanying two police escorts, which ferried Miss Oruru to the emir’s palace when the case was listed for hearing would be unearthed. A few policemen will be punished for dereliction of duty, and perhaps Kano State may be also be forced to re-examine the relationship between some of its statutory bodies and the constitution even in a defective federalist set up. But neither the abduction/elopement story — depending of course on what the courts find out — nor the trial itself will have any consequence on ossified and prevalent social attitudes and cultural and religious stereotypes.
There will be intensified calls and demand for greater activism to persuade more states to domesticate the Child Rights Act, and the laws on marital relationship, rape and domestic violence may be strengthened. Even then, Nigerians may have to moderate their optimism, for as everyone knows, the country’s problem is not so much the absence of laws as the incompetence and lack of will in enforcing them. Until the country can make up its mind what kind of society it really wants to be, competently define its personality, which is at the moment seemingly bipolar, and cast in granite the rights and obligations of citizens even within the purview of their cultural differences and antagonisms, little will be gained by any effort to redress grave moral wrongs.