Ending Violence Against Women Will Save $1.5tn Annually

 By Patricia Scotland

As we head towards the end of the year, many of us will soon be surrounded by our family and friends sitting around dinner tables as we celebrate the festive season. Looking around the table and reflecting on the fact that, on average, every third woman you see will have experienced sexual or physical abuse at some point in their lives.

*Patricia Scotland

This violence is not a remote act happening in other people’s homes, it lives all around an uninvited guest at the table. It thrives on secrecy, infiltrating homes, communities and workplaces. Yet we are nowhere near an appropriate global response that addresses the scale of this problem. If we are serious about tackling this issue, we cannot continue down the same path, or we will rob ourselves and women around the world of the future and life they deserve.

The Shocking Rise Of Paedophilia In Nigeria

By Tony Ogunlowo

Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a news report about a minor being sexually abused by a much older person. And the shocking thing is that for every case reported dozens are not because the young victims are either too scared of their attackers or embarrassed to talk to anyone. And it’s so bad now that it’s rising to epidemic levels and soon Nigeria will be overtaking Cambodia and the Far East as the paedophile hotspot of the world!

Currently the law stipulates life imprisonment for rape of a minor under the new Sexual Offences Bill but the law doesn’t deal with those who marry under-age girls to circumvent the law. Whilst it is a horrendous crime to rape anyone it’s even worse when the victim is a child and the perpetrator can get away with it by either marrying their victim or shutting them up. Most paedophiles get away with their crimes because they are much older and can intimidate or brainwash their victims. And most of the time the perpetrators of these crimes are people known to the victims as fathers, brothers, neighbours, uncles, in-laws etc.

Disturbingly, families are prepared to put up a wall of silence and pretend as if nothing is going wrong if there is a case of incest or paedophilia going on in their household. They all keep quiet, hoping it blow over, in an attempt to preserve their dignity often threatening the victim to remain quiet and not dealing with the perpertrator.

Some tribes even encourage paedophilia by marrying off their under-age daughters to men old enough to be their grandfathers. And over the years no government policy or law has been put in place to outlaw this practice until recently and it’s still not enforced. Our society needs to shape up; it’s not okay for a 50-year old to be seen walking down the road with his new under-age wife. It doesn’t matter if he’s the richest man in Nigeria, an Oba or Emir. It’s morally wrong and the person belongs in jail! And for those who disagree or hide behind the flimsy excuse of ‘it’s our tradition’, how would you feel if your under-age son or daughter was being sexually abused by a 50-year old? Some men even think it’s ‘cool’ to sleep with an under-age child. It’s not and anybody who sleeps with an under-aged child, whether it’s consensual or not, is a paedophile. On a sadder note thirty-five Nigerian Senators actually voted, recently, for the legalization of child marriage! And the Senators in question all happen to be from the North and Muslims! Somebody ought to tell them we live in the 21st century now and such barbaric acts are not tolerable despite what the Koran says about marriage.

Ese's Abduction: Emir Sanusi Has A Case To Answer

By Femi Fani-Kayode

All those that are attempting to distort the narrative about the tragic plight of Miss Ese Oruru are evil and we commit them to God’s judgement. The facts are as follows. She is 14 years old and not 18, and she was abducted from her home. She did not leave her home freely or of her own volition. She was cruelly and wickedly carried away and stolen from her parents, family and loved ones and forcefully taken by complete strangers to a distant land that she had never been before on the other side of the country.

*Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa'adu Abubakar III and Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

This is not a love story about two inseparable young people: it is a story about pedophilia, child abduction, kidnapping, human trafficking, slavery, rape, impunity, wickedness and ritual sex, and Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has a case to answer. That little girl has been raped over and over again and she may well have AIDS, VVF or some other strange sexual disease by now.

Instead of sympathising with her and considering the fact that she may never be the same again in view of the physical and mental torture and trauma that she has suffered over the last few months, some misguided souls and shameless commentators have the temerity to come to social media and say that she was old enough to “get it”, whilst others say that she “loved it” and “wanted it”. I am utterly disgusted and appalled by these sentiments. Where is the humanity of those that speak and think like this? Where is their compassion and where is their soul?

May God judge them and may their own infant daughters be abducted, forcefully Islamised, raped, enslaved and kept against their will as a sex slaves in an Emir’s palace in the same way that Ese was.

Lechers And Child-Brides

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

ON any occasion when the facade of sophistication  and sensitivity to the needs of their fellow citizens crashes, our leaders are often  revealed as  a people who are scandalously ensconced in a notion of self-importance that negates the humanity of those outside the circle of their socio-political and pecuniary influence.  It is because they are deluded by this warped notion that they do not mind neglecting the poor citizens to wallow in their abject misery or deliberately inflicting on them policies that would seal their pulverisation and reify their overbearing sense of importance. 

*Ese Oruru - The Victim 

This is why our leaders steal the money meant for the improvement of the lot of the people, divert  the funds meant for buying weapons and yet send soldiers to the battlefield unarmed. But the citizens still appreciate the true worth of the life of the average Nigerian. This was demonstrated in the past few days by the outrage they expressed at the abduction of the Bayelsa girl, Ese Oruru, who was forcibly Islamised and married at the age of 13.

This outrage did not come from the leaders of the society who were complicit in the ordeal of the teenager.  It came from those outside the realm of power. And without this, those who had the power to set Ese free from captivity would not have bulged.  But  since there is  apparently  official complicity in the ordeal of  the minor, there is  the danger that beyond the outrage that has led to her release,  the culprits  would not be punished . 

And there is a worse danger in so far as a lack of punishment would spawn a recurrence of this aberration. For the case of Yunusa is only a grim upshot of the failure of similar acts of impunity in the past to tug the conscience of the nation and pave the way for appropriate sanctions.  If the Yunusas of our society are not merely serving as minions for some privileged persons, they have only demonstrated that they have learnt enough to appropriate for themselves an art their masters have deployed to satiate their lecherous appetites.