YNaija Editorial: On rape, Senator Chris Anyanwu, and others, need to go all the way

 

File photo
File photo

Victims and the media have become more active in engaging and tackling the issues of sexual misbehaviours.

If you read the newspapers casually, you might get the distinct sense that an epidemic has come upon us – as indeed it has.

There is a definite spike in the reported incidences of rape, paedophilia and other sexual crimes in Nigeria. An analysis of the anecdotal evidence by this paper shows that, rather than an increase in incidence, what has occurred is an increase in reporting. Victims and the media have become more active in engaging and tackling the issues of sexual misbehaviors.

Unfortunately, this is where the positive spike ends. For the rest of the public, it appears to be business as usual.

With victims ranging increasingly from month-old babies to women well past 70, the public has repeatedly shrugged, tracked responses on social media and online show humour, mild shock, shrugs, and sadly a yet-persistent victim blaming. Taken as a whole, it reflects disengagement with the seriousness – and frequency – of these crimes.

Suspects apprehended are still hardly charged to court, law enforcement agents transparently non-sympathetic to the traumatic effects of sexual crimes; many times the cases are yet ‘settled amicably’ and allowed to die a natural death once they are off the pages of newspapers – or blogs. There is the absence of a systemic response, such as would apply if as many armed robberies or murders were to so register.

It is for this reason we are elated with the Sexual Offences Bill presented on the Senate floor by Chris Anyanwu (APGA – Imo East). The long-overdue bill advocates life imprisonment for convicted rapists and a a special unit within the Nigeria Police Force trained to handle, and resolve, sexual crimes.

The latter score is crucial. In a country that yet stigmatises victims of sexual crimes, it is necessary to course-correct the perspectives law enforcement officials who act (or not) due to ignorance or prejudice. As always, prevention is better than palliation.

We are glad that the bill has quickly gained support already passed its second reading, and encourage Senator Anyanwu and her engaged colleagues to also look beyond the crime, and expand the orbits of that law to deal with the effects of the crime – to help victims through counsel and therapy, to provide information, to create a support system that encourages more reporting and more engagement by the public.

It is our hope that the bill, when passed into law – and surely it must be – be quickly ratified into law by the various states and included in their penal codes. We must not allow this law go the way of the Child Rights Bill, which has only been ratified by 13 of our 36, since the National Assembly passed it in 2003.

It took the gang rape and eventual death of a 23-year old New Dehli woman in a moving bus for India to take its sexual deviance crisis seriously.

Unfortunately, by the time the sluggish Indian authorities decided to step up, the country had already been tagged the rape capital of the world.

Surely, Nigeria already has enough unsavoury tags around its neck. If we cannot take action to reclaim our basic humanity from sexual criminals around us, can we at least do the right thing to avoid further global disgrace?

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