This case
was unusual only because the victim died. According to reports, the rape of
underage girls has been on the increase over the last few years although, as
with all statistics in Nigeria, nobody really knows. What is certain, in any case, is that there
must be many, many more than we read about in the pages of the newspapers for
obvious enough reasons. The sole consolation, such as it is, is that the
culprits can be charged to court under the country’s criminal laws, although
given the state of the criminal justice system – corruption everywhere you look,
as we recently saw in the case of the last chief justice of the FCT – this
isn’t necessarily saying much. But now even this recourse of ‘the common man’,
as the saying has it, is about to change by making such rapes legal.
To
Nigeria’s great shame, the Senate recently amended the 1999 Constitution – an
illegal document to begin with but we must work with what we have – to allow
for underage marriage. According to Ahmed Yerima, who caused nationwide uproar
in 2009 by marrying a 13-year-old Egyptian in contravention of the Child Rights
Act, such a provision was un-Islamic because ‘any woman that is married is of
age and if you say 18 years you are going against Islamic law’, and, further,
that a woman or girl who is married shall be
considered ‘of age’ by virtue of her marital status. In other words, even an
infant can be considered ‘of age’ once she has been taken in wedlock. The vote
was passed by 65 votes to 30, which gives an idea of the moral bankruptcy – to
say nothing of the darker desires - of those charged with making laws for the
good governance of the country.
By all accounts, the session was rowdy. David Mark, the Senate
president and one of the dissenters, tried to deflect the discussion by pointing
out that the relevant clauses had already been put to the vote in the ongoing
constitution amendment exercise and that standing policy was not to revisit
them. Yerima promptly accused him of ‘double standards’ by citing two previous
exceptions, whereupon Mark conceded that ‘it could be revisited another time
after Islamic scholars can argue it’ before finally capitulating ‘[b]ecause of
the sensitivity of issues on religion’. It is a measure of how distorted our
politics has become that the ‘issue’ of religion should come up at all given
the secular provisions of this same Constitution which is forced to recognise –
albeit with certain provisos – the multiplicity of faiths attempting to rub
along in what is already a delicate balancing act foisted on an unwilling
populace.
That Yerima himself should invoke Islam in order to justify a
degenerate lifestyle is hardly surprising. During the controversy over his
Egyptian bride he had claimed his allegiance to the Koran ahead of the
Constitution he had otherwise sworn to uphold, but perhaps he was merely
obfuscating in order to deflect attention from the constitutional provisions he
was intent on not upholding - but which he nevertheless now wants to amend. Islam
may indeed permit the paedophilia he assiduously practices - in 2006 he married
a 15-year-old he plucked from school before going for an even younger model – but
if so surely not in such specious terms: a girl is of age once she is married and
so doesn’t have to be 18 in order to be of age. Why not just say that you want
to violate little girls?
In fact the ‘issue’ is less about Islam than the excuse to indulge
the irresponsible antics of a power-drunk ruling class for whom religion –and
not only Islam – is a convenient cover. But to accuse those who make up this
class of simple hypocrisy would be to miss the point. It is telling how often
we are exhorted to respect ‘duly constituted authority’ in order that the likes
of Yerima might continue as they do, being themselves bound by a higher
authority which itself cannot be questioned, a sort of divinely appointed chain
of command with God – or Allah – in His Heaven and all’s right with the world.
It was for this reason that the Senate president was quick to trample on the
Constitution he had also sworn to uphold by seeking the opinion of Islamic
scholars on one of its provisions, as if what they thought mattered any more
than would those of your local pastor. Both have a role to play, no doubt, but
not when it involves the fundamental human rights of Nigerian citizens, which
alone are sacrosanct.
For Yerima, of course, the girls he would violate – does violate –
are no more real than pets he might want to acquire as playthings, to be discarded
when no longer needed. The only question is: how much? For the Egyptian girl it
was $100,000, but then she was a more exotic creature than the 15-year-old he
promptly divorced in order not to violate – so many violations – the Islamic
injunction on the number of such pets you may keep under your roof at any one
time. Before long Boko Haram will be telling us that murder is also sanctioned
from above.
©
Adewale Maja-Pearce
Adewale Maja-Pearce is the author of several books, including Loyalties
and Other Stories, In My Father's Country, How many miles to Babylon?, A
Mask Dancing, Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?, From Khaki to Agbada,
Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, A Peculiar Tragedy, and
Counting the Cost, as well as the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human
rights violations in Nigeria. He also edited The Heinemann Book of African
Poetry in English, Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal, Christopher Okigbo:
Collected Poems, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories,
and
Dream Chasers.
Click here to see Maja-Pearce's amazon.com page: http://www.amazon.com/Adewale-Maja-Pearce/e/B001HPKIOU
Click here to see Maja-Pearce's amazon.com page: http://www.amazon.com/Adewale-Maja-Pearce/e/B001HPKIOU
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