Victims Of Circumstances: A Look Into The Growing Menace Of Rape in Nigeria

By Lemuel Irabor
Twitter: @LemuelIrabor




                                                    Image Credits: Hello Pretty

After a busy day at work, I usually take the time to relax adequately at home. For me, relaxing means surfing the web or listening to the radio while trying to fix myself a hot plate. In the part of Nigeria that I currently live in, we are saturated with a lot of on-air content, thanks largely to the myriad of radio stations that are springing up here and there by the day.
On this particular evening, the mini-adventurer in me decided to surf through the channels in search of something different from my usual haunts. And so I gave in and began surfing frequencies.

“Apple of her mother’s eye,

She be trophy daughter,

Mommy raised her,

Daddy never dropped a dollar..”

Recognizing the beginning of a song that carried a message or told a story—which I
love as I could usually relate to them—I listened on to the story of a girl who was raised by a single mother, got raped by an avuncular figure while doing an internship at his firm after recently graduating with a first-class law degree.

“One late night, became wild in the sitting room..

‘Uncle, please stop.’

‘Shh! Be silent.’

Uncle didn’t stop till he broke the hymen.”

Thanks to this traumatic experiencee, Sola, as she was called in the song, became confused and addicted to sex, eventually becoming an ‘aristo’, an euphemism for prostitution. At the end of this sad tale, it was revealed that she’d contracted HIV and had began to counsel young girls about the dangers of letting their vicissitudes dictate the course of their lives. The traumatic sexual encounter had effectively diverted her from her dreams.

When the anchor of the radio show came back on and gave the title of the song, I immediately rushed to download the song from the internet having already known the artiste due to my familiarity with his voice. I’d lost my appetite. My throat had gone dry. And my heart was still in tatters at the magnitude of the injustice that had been meted to this undeserving young lady.
Indeed, one does need to have their nerves in check before listening to CHILD OF THE WORLD by lawyer-turned-entertainer Folarin “Falz” Falana.

Perhaps this story is not one of a kind with the incessant reports of rape we get on a daily regular basis, especially those of minors which are termed ‘defilement’ for legal purposes. Particularly fresh in my memory is the case of an adolescent girl who was raped and impregnated by her father who, by all ramifications, is supposed to be the one protecting her. The shameless man, a 44-year old man, claimed that he turned on his daughter for sexual satisfaction, after her mother’s deah left him bereft of a spouse. Continuing his bizarre explanation, he claimed that because of the close resemblance, he thought he was ‘making love to his late wife’. That seems to be no way different from the usual blames on the devil or evil spirits. Without a doubt, such cases of incestous taboos are becoming a disturbing trend in our once morally upright society.
But perhaps even more surprising are the policies currently in place tailored to address this social malady. According to the Sexual Offences bill passed by the Nigerian senate on Wednesday, 3rd June, 2015, anyone convicted of rape or defilement of a child below 11 years of age would face a lenghty life imprisonment term. This is a good development, but we should remember that it is very limited—almost ineffective since rape cases are hardly reported, much less followed up in court—as it only addresses one aspect of dealing with the problem: a rather inapt cure.

Rape could be prevented altogether.
For example if the victim has a knowledge of some basic self-defense tactics or is in proximity to several items that could disorient the attacker from going on with his evil compulsions. One common gizmo that has saved a lot of women from going through this traumatic experience is the renowned pepper spray (also known as a capsicum spray). In fact, popular Nollywood actress & TV show host, Dorcas Shola Fapson, recently reported in a post shared on Twitter how she stunned a would-be rapist with a generous gust from her trusted pepper spray can which she always carried around in her purse.
Replying to the post, a female Nigerian user, Dolapo Pizzu complained that she had been accosted by men of the Nigerian Police Force when they learned she possessed a pepper spray, with a unique mention to the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Yomi Shogunle .
“What are you doing with a pepper spray? Pepper spray is an offensive weapon, Nigeria law prohibits going in public armed.”, Yomi Shogunle replied.
Trying to analyze his statement, a pepper spray is definitely not an offensive weapon under the context of rape. It should be taken into consideration that a rape victim would ordinarily not even expose the fact that they were thus armed prior to an attack, which effectively obliterates the ‘offensive” tag that the Police spokesperson had given them, replacing it with a more appropriate ‘defensive’ tag. We should remember the biological element that has been instilled in each and every one of us, the mighty fight-or-flight factor, adrenaline. When faced with a danger situation, we have the choice to either fight the enemy with everything we’ve got or scurry off to the first safe haven available. Any injury we cause the harbinger of mischief to get out of harm’s way is definitely not our fault—we were simply obeying our innate desire to survive despite all odds!
So, if the pepper spray could be termed offensive by the ‘Nigeria law’,  adrenaline, which we have little-to-no control over, should also be termed ‘offensive’ and thence proscribed by law. Nigerians should no longer act in dangerous scenarios as doing so could get them in trouble with the local law.

What a world that would be!

Anyways, the aim of this piece s not to shame the Nigerian police for what is perceived too be a myopic view of a very realistic issue. I simply believe that rape should be given the attention it deserves, considering the fact that I has become rife throughout today’s society.
While we try to deal with the problem through sensitization and related efforts, we should not leave the victim defenseless when faced with an unrepentant attacker. The trauma associated with rape is a leading cause of depression and suicide between young people. The case of  Khensani Maseko, a 23 year old student in South Africa is still inundating major news channels and blogs. She is reported to have committed suicide after a recent rape incident involving her boyfriend.
As in  the tragic case of Sola in the song that inspired this whole text, the rape experience could lead the victim into more social vices in a frantic attempt to find closure to their traumatic experience. Drug and substance abuse, prostitution and engaging in murder, kidnapping, arson, vandalism or other violent practices are only the beginning of the negative impacts of traumatic sexual experiences to the society.
I will not conclude this piece without reiterating that, as rape is a global issue, we cannot rely solely on the government of the day to help deal with these cases. We should also remember that as a ubiquitous problem, our sisters, wives, daughters and other females whom we hold dear are extremely susceptible. Even more heartbreaking is the fact that nowadays, we are getting daily reports of males, both children and adults, facing sexual assault by both male and female perpetrators. And according to information from a public research carried out in the US, individuals who had faced homosexual rape had more psychological damage as most had become confused about their sexualities.


                                                    Image Credits: IX Political Cartoons

Sensitization through public education and warnings of the consequences is key, no doubt. But a problem tackled from both ends of prevention and cure—with more emphasis on prevention—is better tackled and offers more favourable results. Remember that the human mind never really forgets any experience. All that is needed to bring up a memory of an event are having the appropriate triggers in place which could be psychological (as in déjà vu situations) or physical or both.
Let us also remember that the cause of rape is not skimpy dressing (although this does not mean that it should be promoted) or provocative gestures or possession by evil spirits or even an usual occurrence of naturally high libido; rapists are the sole reasons rape happens.

Let us stop blaming the victims.
And to you, the intending rapist, take a minute to reconsider the immeasurable harm you would be causing the victim.

Rape is dehumanizing.

God bless Nigeria!

Lemuel Irabor writes from Nigeria.




PS: If you need the services of a Freelance Writer, feel free to contact me via lifeandasixteenyearold@gmail.com or send me a DM on Twitter.
I am especially skilled in Creative & Narrative Writing, although I dabble into Business writing frequently.
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