Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is upset
by the content of the Sexual Offences Bill recently passed by the 7th National
Assembly .
He has, therefore, asked President
Muhammadu Buhari to “never place his assent on such a nefarious distraction.”
One of the controversial
highlights of the bill,sponsored by Senator Chris Anyanwu, is the
prescription of life imprisonment for anyone who has sexual intercourse
with a child under 11 years.
Many Nigerians believe that the age
ceiling should have been higher.
Professor Soyinka, in an open letter
to the human rights community on the occasion of the June 12, 1993
election anniversary, yesterday said 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?”
He said: “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.”
That first Bill was sponsored by
Senator Ahmed Yerima,a former governor of Zamfara State.
Continuing,Soyinka said: “Does
Yerima’s Bill, gleefully assented to by his peers, not simply vitiate this
latter, supposedly humane concern for the protection of the child?
“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 base 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 ten thousand dollars, you are free to
rape 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.”
Asking Buhari to refuse assent
to the bill,Soyinka said: “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.
“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!”
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