Let me start by telling a story I read about six years ago. I forget in which of the national newspapers, but it happened in Edo state.
A young man, notorious for his criminal activities, was caught for the umpteenth time. He was a nightmare to the community. He graduated from being a petty thief, to worse. Each time he was caught, he was beaten up, then forgiven once he promised he would change his ways. Atimes, he was given the Holy Bible to swear on. He usually did. But that did not stop him from going back to his evil acts.
So, on this day when he was caught again, the villagers decided to finally deal with him. They went for petrol and used discarded tyres. He went on his knees, and begged the elders to give him one final chance. There is a solution to his criminal life he, emphatically, told them. “Take me to the village shrine to swear. God is too forgiving. He is a patient God. He does not kill like that. Each time I swear, using the Bible, I kneel down and ask God for forgiveness. He forgives. But the village deity is very wicked. It does not forgive. If you take me there, and I steal again, it will kill me immediately. It has no mercy.
I remember this story now because of the sacrilegious rape and murder of Miss Uwaila Omozuwa on a Church premises. You know her story. But for the purpose of this write-up, please, bear a brief re-cap.
A 100 level student of the University of Benin, Uwa, 22, had, on the fateful day, gone to the Church to read. It has not been disclosed why she chose to go to the Church to read. But, perhaps, she wanted somewhere quiet so as to concentrate on her studies. More important, somewhere she felt safe. Perhaps, she wanted to be close to God while reading.
So she headed for her own parish of the Church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG. While reading in the Church hall, some hoodlums attacked her, knocked her unconscious with a can of fire extinguisher, took turns to rape her, abandoned her in the pool of her own blood, and escaped.
She died three days later at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital where she was rushed to.
Since Uwa’s gruesome murder, reactions have been coming like claps of thunder from all corners of the country. Even our President, Muhammadu Buhari, a man not given to quick reactions to such things, reacted. Many other high profile Nigerians and Organizations have done the same. The National Leader, of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, put aside 2023, and the sore thumb in the Edo APC, threatening to demystify his political son, APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, and carried a placard, protesting the rape and subsequent death of Uwa, and two others.
Uwa’s is not the only case of rape in Nigeria which ended in tragedy. In fact, since hers, at least, two other rape cases in Ibadan have also ended in tragedy.
There is the 18 year-old Miss Barakat Bello, a student of the Science Laboratory Technology, Ibadan, who was raped to death in her father’s house. There is Miss Azeezat, a Masters Degree student who was also raped to death in Ibadan. And if you were in doubt of how deep into the gutter Nigeria has sunk, you only need to take a look at the front page of the Saturday Punch of June the 6th.
*Four masked men gang-rape 12-year-old-girl in Lagos.
*Man, 25, rapes 85-year-old grandma in Niger State.
*Police arrest LASU undergrad kissing three-year-old in viral video.
*How rapists choked, nearly killed us, yet no justice.
*My attacker barged into my room, covered my mouth while I was asleep – 70-year-old Ogun woman raped by truck driver.
* I hated sex after I was raped – Oshonaike table tennis star.
And according to The Guardian On Saturday, quoting Coalition of Civil Society Groups sources, 80 Women and Girls were raped in Nigeria in Six Months.
And, there is no borderline for those who are capable of rape. Trust nobody. Actress Funke Daramola-Saloko, founder of Passion Against Rape And Abuse Africa, PARAA, says 75 per cent of those who come to her for help, were raped Religious people – the Clergy.
I am not sure anybody has added the horrifying story, made public a few days ago, of the demented father who has been sexually abusing his seven-month-old baby girl since she was three months! One is tempted to ask: Where has the baby’s mother been? She needs to be given 24 strokes of the cain, publicly, every morning, for not protecting her daughter from a demented man.
So, one then asks: Why has Uwa’s case shaken everybody like an earthquake? Why has it made us all sick to the stomach?
Here is why.
It happened in a Church premises, the RCCG, a Church pastored by the revered Pastor Enoch Adeboye. As you know, dear readers, there are too many of these Churches. Scores of them on every street. They go by all sorts of names, many of the names weird. There are all kinds of Pastors, Apostles, Prophets, General Overseers, Bishops, Archbishops, parading the corridors of Pentecostal Churches, claiming all kinds of things, with all kinds of powers. All kinds of things, too, happen in their Churches. We read a lot of strange things going on, including human and animal sacrifices.
But some of these Churches are not the RCCG, and their promoters are not Pastor Adeboye. This Pastor gives one a sense of protection when he talks to, or prays for one. No shouting, no screaming, as if God was dead, or asleep, and needed to be woken up to hear our supplications to him.
I bet you, if this atrocity had taken place on the premises of some of these other Churches, it won’t have attracted this much outrage. But this was Adeboye’s RCCG – one of the respected Churches, with plenty of clout. And, that is the irony.
The 22-year-old Uwa went to her Heavenly Father’s house to read. She went there to take refuge. She felt she was safe. In God’s house. Yet, the devil located her. She was brutally and gruesomely raped by dogs.
Her traumatised mother said she was gagged, and her hands tied behind her, then clubbed unconscious, and brutally raped.
Her devastated father said blood filled the scene like where a cow was killed. And to emphasize what Uwa went through, he revealed that even in her state of unconsciousness, for the three days she battled death before she gave up, tears continuously ran down her cheeks.
The location of the Church must be lonely. The premises itself must have been lonely. No soul, except a guard at the gate. Given the level of insecurity in the country, it is difficult to understand why the young lady chose the Church as the best place to read. According to her mother, she had been doing that for, at least, two years. Big mistake. Somebody must have been monitoring her.
Lonely places, even when they are God’s own House, are not advisable for anybody, especially kids, girls, and women. They are vulnerable species
What happened to Uwa shakes the faith. And makes one wonder about God’s patience and tolerance. It is also legitimate to wonder where God was when the devil brutally attacked His daughter in His own House this fateful day. The only consolation here is: God will deal with the devils at his own time.
There is a rape pandemic in Nigeria. It is difficult to understand what the attraction is. I can only put it down to “man’s inhumanity to woman.”
And this happens because the Nigerian Government does not take the case of rape seriously. Those who should take action, either do not think that a woman has a right to her body, or they think it is her fault.
This other day, in the heat of the atrocious Uwa rape, and other rapes, a Member of the House of Representatives from Borno State, Ahmed Jaha, told the world it is the fault of women. It is because of their indecent dressing. They attract rape to themselves.
And this man is still in the House. He has not resigned for his insult against women, which, by the way, in case he was forgetting, include his mother, wife and/or wives, sisters and daughters. Jaha has just offered a lame belated apology. But what does it matter? 0ut of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh, a saying goes.
The questions to ask Jaha and those who think like him are:
Is it likely that Uwa dressed indecently when she went to read at the RCCG? What about the 70 year old woman who was sleeping in her house when she was pounced upon? And the 12-year-old who was gang-raped? And many others, including Muslim women in his Borno State who cover themselves from head to toe? What about Rev’d Sisters?
Truth is, most Nigerian men think women are play things, just objects, sex objects, sidekicks – to toy with, to play with, to kick about and around. Something to be conquered and subjugated to submission. The lives, freedom and well-being of women don’t matter. The girl-child neither have a right to education, not to good life.
That is why most rape victims are ridiculed by the Police when they report their ordeal? That is why, even in court, rape victims are deliberately subjected to probing, embarrassing, and humiliating questions, so much so that many choose not to report, or when they do, abandon such cases mid-way. Isn’t that why some husbands think they have the right to rape their wives?
Isn’t that why, even some of the most educated people would refer to an object, any, and every object, and even associations, as “her”, instead of “it”? They equate women with, and to objects.
Isn’t that why children, as young as 10 years, are married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers?
Isn’t it why this other day, an Islamic Cleric, already parading a harem (of eight wives), would, forcefully, want to add a-14-year-old as his 10th wife?
Isn’t it why an obscene number of men are still not happy when their wives give birth to female babies? Isn’t it why many of them either kick their wives out, or marry a second woman, for giving birth to female babies, even when it is entirely their fault? Isn’t it why Nigerian cartoonists make women “sooooooo” ugly, and out of shape in their cartoons – obscenely big bottomed and obscenely big breasted?
Even in Nollywood, women are presented as pitiable, cheap, sex objects who would go to any lengths, to get a man.
Isn’t it why one idiot, the other day, posted the battered face and body of his wife on Facebook after he had beaten her silly? It is like: Nothing will happen, afterall, she is a common woman.
It is endless, as endless as the humiliation of, and the discrimination against women.
The brazen raping of women thrive, and has become a pandemic because the law and those who implement it don’t care. When one reports, nothing much is heard about such cases. Except for the initial noise, unless I missed it, I have not heard much again on the case of the man who, after battering his wife, posted it on Facebook. Why would it take this long to bring such a demented man to book?
Why is it so frustrating to bring rapists and wife batterers to book?
Why is it difficult to slam men who rape their daughters and minors, with life sentences? Why does the investigation of rape cases take so long? Why do rape cases take so long to decide when taken to court?
Perhaps I missed it, but since the Uwa ugly incident, except the Ekiti State Government, I have not seen any other state Government, or Government organ, take any serious step, or willingness to put rapists to shame.
Before now, the Ekiti state Government, led by Governor Kayode Fayemi, supported by his lovely wife, Bisi, an avowed feminist and Gender Specialist, had started to name and shame rapists, including, I am sad to say, a God-cursed Anglican Priest.
And this last Saturday, in the aftermath of the fate which befell Uwa and others, Fayemi, with his wife, standing by his side, signed a law to the effect that no alleged rapist would be granted bail, until the case is disposed of, and if convicted, would enjoy no prerogative of mercy.
Incidentally, the forum of Governors wives, either at the national level, zonal level, or party level, has made no statements. Nor has anything been heard from the Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs Paulin Tallen. The other stringent voice I have heard is that of the First Lady of Ondo State, Mrs Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, a woman fully dedicated to the causes of women and the girl-child.
Last week, the House of Representatives turned down a motion to castrate rapists. That would have served them right. When their weapons of mass destruction and murder are taken away from them, others would desist from such abominable acts.
Finally, back to the Uwa case. It is heart-warming that President Buhari and the Inspector General of Police have taken interest in the case. Pastor Adeboye, whose Church-member Uwa was, will back them with prayers. When the beasts are arrested, they should be publicly paraded and made to go through the pains and agony Uwa went through. It is hoped that the Uwa case, and the others following it, and those before it, will be given accelerated hearing. Hopefully, they will get justice. And hopefully, this will, finally, restore the dignity and self esteem of Nigerian women.
