Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has
added his voice to the growing opposition over
the sexual offences bill hurriedly passed by the
immediate past Senate of the 7th National
Assembly. He wrote a letter to the present set of
senators, which was published by PM news.
Read below:
Dear Friends and Comrades,
Regretfully, I am unable to be with you
tomorrow morning. However, I extend a
warm embrace to you in your resolve to keep
within Nigeria’s short memory the events
that have been central to the attainment of
our democracy – warts and all – enjoyed today
by you and me. June 12 remains the true
Democracy Day despite the unprincipled
efforts of some prime beneficiaries of that
struggle to expunge it from a people’s
chronicle.
If I had been able to join you, I would most
certainly have asked you for help. It has to do
with the nation’s latest alleged legislative
stance against sexual abuse – molestation,
rape, paedophilia etc etc. I am only a layman,
not a “learned brother”, so any help from the
learned is earnestly solicited. The question
on my mind is this: is that legislative
reinforcement not merely a case of rubbing
vaseline on leprosy?
In this supposedly progressive bill, sponsored
by the respected Senator Chris Anyanwu. I
could not help but notice a reiteration – as if
to ensure that there is no ambiguity – of the
word “child”, near superfluously. Well, we
understand “child” as defined in most
dictionaries. There is however also child as
defined by the Nigerian legislature. This
definition is contained in a prior Bill,
sponsored, no less, by a notorious serial
paedophile and cross-border sex trafficker,
yet lawmaker – one Ahmed Yerima.
Does Yerima’s Bill, gleefully assented to by
his peers, not simply vitiate this latter,
supposedly humane concern for the protection
of the child? Again, I confess to being only a
‘bloody layman’ in such matters. However,
reading both bills, it strikes me that all the
new bill does is empower the clique of
paedophiles. All you need do is “marry” even a
six-year old under any local laws, and do
whatever you want with her. Through
marriage, she is already an “adult” . Her
“defiler ” is now fully protected by this law. She
is not. The current Bill is the ancient story of
locking the stable door after the horse has
bolted. End of story? Yerimah and his fellow
perverts are having the last laugh.
This issue of child protection looms large all
over the world – including bills passed or
under debate. It is one that defines us in our
own estimation and in global view as worthy
to be counted among humanity, or as the
basest kind of living species that exist solely
for their sensual gratification, even at the
cost of the emotional and physiological well-
being of the weak and vulnerable of society.
Our lawmakers have betrayed our children.
This latest addition of insult to social injury
was tucked within a last-minute avalanche of
bills that were passed at lightning speed
during the tail-end of the last legislative
assemblage – 47 bills in under 3 hours – surely
one for the Guinness Book of Records. An
accident? Or by design? This bill, subjected
to wrong arguments, merely consolidates the
reduction of female minors to sex objects. As
long as you can afford a bag of rice or – as in
the case of cross-border tastes such as Ahmed
Yerima’s – ten thousand dollars, you are free
To Molest a child to death. This, surely cannot
pretend to represent the will of a people who
care. Once you re-define female adulthood as
marital status, all subsequent protection bills
for the girl-child are worthless, cynical.
Neither culture nor religion is at issue here.
It is, quite starkly, an issue of science, the
science of the human body, one that
demonstrably instructs us when the female
human body is still at risk from conjugal rites.
We should therefore call upon the Medical
Association to take the lead on this, a human
issue that affects all men and women of
conscience. A nation should not be founded on
the sexual exploitation of the fragile, and
innocent. The debate must remain open.
President Buhari – and here I make my first
imposition on his presidency – should never
place his assent on such a nefarious
distraction. Its implications doom the
victim to afflictions that churn the stomach
even to think of the human toll. Perhaps those
legislators think that vaginal fistula is
something thought up arm-chair critics with
nothing better to occupy their minds. No
matter, let those who profess a genuine
concern declare their stand on this. On my
part, I find unacceptable any effort to build a
nation on perversions that merely minister
to man’s sexual appetites. This is a sordid
appeasement of a minority who actually
require psychiatric help. President Buhari
should not give his assent to the Bill without
amendments that address the earlier Yerima
gift to the nation. It’s a trap!
Let us learn from the heroes of June 12. Few
people have done more for the cause of
liberation than the Hero of this day.
M.K.O.Abiola was an open polygamist. None
of his wives was ever found to be below the
only age of consent that is now needlessly
under contention – the scientific. We cannot
substitute science and observation for any
spurious alibis that sacrifice the child to
private lust!
The debate must remain open until resolved
in favour of the child.
Soyinka recently urged the Buhari
administration to adopt a new strategy in
the war against the Boko Haram insurgency
and terrorism in general, in order to achieve
results.
