So last week, the Parents Teacher Association of The Crescent School in Victoria Island Lagos, launched a petition to the Federal Ministry of Information to “investigate the process that led to the adoption of some ‘immoral textbooks’ by the National Examination Council and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.” The phrasing is so ridiculous, I had to copy them verbatim from the Punch article where I came across this story and highlight them. It gets much, much worse.
The school singles out three books from the entire curriculum; The Precious Child by Queen Okwesire, The Tears of a Bride by Oyekunle Oyedeji and In Dependence, by Sarah Manyika, for its witch hunt. Of the three, Sarah Manyika is the most publicly recognised, her books winning international awards and her book In-Dependence (which the School seeks to have removed from the curriculum, an established part of literature syllabuses in many parts of the world). The school’s reasons for singling out these books are so ridiculous I have to quote them verbatim as well.
“The books are nothing but a means of glamorising acts of indecency such as rape, violence, kidnapping, girl defilement and sexualisation of knowledge. The books expose the vulnerable and unsuspecting minds of 10-12 year olds to amorous and deviant practices that can in turn breed rapists, cultists, homosexuals and kidnappers. The prevalence of cases of rape among secondary school pupils in recent times cannot be unconnected with the urge to experiment with the experience they have from such books.’’
Yep, you read that right.
In 2017, where the average Nigerian child has more access to hardcore pornography on the roadside through pirated disc sellers than they have access to books, Nigerian parents are aggressively trying to blame rape culture on books that pretty much just state the facts as they are. They also blame homosexuality and promiscuity on literary fiction, when their DSTV subscriptions offer their children several options to watch women get systematically raped, every way to Sunday.
It is interesting because these same parents have no problems with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart being on the curriculum, a book where there is wanton violence and a child beheaded by his father. Why aren’t they worried that the book will inspire patricide and matricide. Or is it only sex that needs to be policed, never violence.
I would love to say that this kind of shallow minded behaviour is restricted to Nigeria, but sadly it is not. America and Britain have had long standing battles between its Federal Department of Education fighting Parent Boards for ‘controversial’ books to be kept on the student curriculum. Books like Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being A Wallflower, beloved with each generation of young adults looking to see themselves in their books, were both banned for ‘immorality’. Instead of training their children better, religious parents, Nigerian and otherwise prefer to pass the buck and blame something else, anything else for the evils of the world.
There is an epidemic of child molestation happening in Nigeria, 70% of which is perpetrated by adults, and I don’t see any of these parents advocating for sex education classes to better prepare their children to spot and report these incidences. Instead they want to ban and censor books.
When will we learn that it doesn’t work, it never works.
