Female lawmaker advocates death for rapists

PAUL OMOKUVIE, Bauchi

A former member of the Bauchi State House of Assembly who represented Dass constituency, Hon Maryam Bagel, has recommended death penalty against perpetrators of rape to stem the alarming cases of the crime in the country.

Speaking in an interview with journalists in Bauchi, on Wednesday, Bagel, the only female lawmaker in the 8th Assembly called on lawmakers at both the National and state Assemblies to immediately revise the laws against rape saying they are nothing but a mere slap on the hands of perpetrators of rape.

Bagel urged her colleagues to consider revising existing laws against rape,  opining that capital punishment by death by “whatever means should be more gruesome for the perpetrators” to serve as deterrent.

She explained: “You see, these human rights are talking about it; it is where your rights stop that another person’s starts.

“We should not be hypocritical about human rights because, those countries selling human rights to us are they not practising death penalty? Up till today in some so-called developed countries, they practise executions.”

She wondered “what kind of insensitivity would make a man rape a two-month-old child or rape his own biological daughter? What kind of madness is that?”

Bagel believed that “as long as we are not taking actions, cases of rape will continue to escalate and to me the only language that rapists will know is if there is death in it.

“Somebody can rape another person that has no energy to stop it, to me, it is like committing murder because many people die as a result of rape or they get infected with deadly diseases.

“To me, we should revise our laws. All these human rights that we are talking about, is the right of the perpetrators of such actions, or their lives better those of their victims?

“Are we trying to protect a criminal? Is it that when a crime is committed that we start to talk about rights? What about the right of the person raped? Capital punishment should come back fast in this country because we need capital punishment for some violent crimes like rape to prevent its escalation.”