Follow Us on Google
Promise Adiele
Any conscientious observer of trends in Nigeria must be struck by the curiously high priority assigned to issues of morality especially the sex question. Our society is fervently roused to fever-pitch once the moral question bothers on sex as if such discourse dictates the only margin of morality. I understand the skirmishes associated with the sex question because people all over the world are at their lowest ebb when sex is concerned. It challenges their ideological functions and reveals their moral vulnerability.
Indeed, great men have been brought to their knees by their sexual predatory predilections, yet many men have not learned their lessons. I am not about to write a treatise on sexual immorality because any attempt to do so will inevitably gravitate towards an academic discourse which will detract from my main concern in this essay. Therefore, let us quickly “face what is facing us” as we usually say in popular parlance.
In the last few days, sundry news outlets, including the promiscuous social media with an incredible capacity to accommodate lies, truths, half-truths, and ignorance, have been inundated with diverse reports recounting the incidence of rape, especially within religious establishments. At the centre of the whole saga is Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA), alleged to have raped Busola Dakore when she was seventeen years old. In the same vein, an Islamic cleric, Abdulsalam Salaudeen is alleged to have raped a five-year-old girl in Igando area of Lagos State. However, while there have been protests and uproar against the COZA report, the public has remained ominously quite over the rape incident that occurred inside a mosque. This reveals the innumerable lopsided dialectic of social perception of crime within the neat lines of morality. Perhaps the difference in reaction toward the two incidents could be because the public is outraged at the many cases of rape alleged to have been committed by the philandering COZA pastor. Whatever may be the reason for the skewed reactionary voices over the two incidents, rape today, like all other forms of crime, stands trial in the court of public opinion.
Rape is one of the worst anti-social behaviours known to mankind. I once wrote an essay titled “Rape and the Nigerian condition” published in the Sun Newspaper of 21st March 2018. In that essay, I had outlined the ways rapists are punished in some parts of the world to deter other people minded to pursue the same line of ignominy. However, following the allegations against the COZA man of the pulpit, new dimensions of public perception of immorality have hit our social spaces. It offends the sensibilities for some people to question why Busola Dakore did not speak up until now.
In doing so, such people subliminally argue in favour of rape. To rely on one’s sentiment as a source of one’s social appreciation is to betray a yawning vacuum in one’s reasoning faculty. The reprobate argument that Busola Dakore’s revelation is an attack on the church and a way to pull the pastor down is not only offensive to morality but a profanity against the body of Christ which the church represents. The fair, objective question to ask is this; did the pastor commit the crime and similar ones brought against him? To be concerned with any other matter as far as this topic is concerned is to indulge in acts inimical to good conscience.
A crime does not expire even if it lasts for one hundred years. If Pastor Fatoyinbo of COZA committed rape, let him face the consequences. The reason why he committed the rape, the ways in which the victim is complicit in the matter and all other such nebulous, extraneous reasons negate the margins of morality.
Rape dehumanizes the victim, it traumatizes her and constitutes a permanent mental block on her mind. Some victims of rape commit suicide, some go as far as killing the rapist. Some remain unmarried and develop innate hatred for the opposite sex. Due to its very corrosive and dilapidating effect on the victims, most parts of the world have devised different punitive measures for those found guilty of rape. In a certain community in Taiwan, rapists are tied to a tree with their hands behind them and ferocious rabbits called upon to eat their manhood. In a village in Japan, the scrotum of a rapist is placed on a wooden table and a hammer employed to crush them. Now, if you flinch at the prospect of such treatment, then you must understand the level of angst against rape as an anti-social behaviour in some parts of the world. In those places, they do not have the time for civil laws and all the attendant chicanery. Justice is meted out immediately because sometimes, the law is subverted to protect the man of means. The sell-out movie, Above the Law, comes to mind.
Although it is possible for some people to be wrongly accused of rape and even sent to jail or face other consequences for an offense they didn’t commit, the act of rape should be condemned. Some mothers share blame in the increasing rate of rape across the country. It is disheartening that some mothers dress their little girls in a very irresponsible way without realizing that some men are demented and can hardly stand the sight of female flesh. Also, some mothers leave their daughters in the care of uncles, lesson teachers, pastors, imams, neighbours, and other adult males. When it happens, the child is too scared to speak, too ashamed to speak or she is threatened by the rapist never to tell anyone.
Given the kinds of hardship millions of Nigerians are exposed to, given that our country and its leadership offer no hope for the ordinary citizen, millions of people have found succour in religious organizations. In Nigeria, churches and mosques take the centre stage. Unfortunately, the primary roles of these religious organizations have been hugely eroded by fame-seeking superstars masquerading as pastors and imams. Religious organizations that should be seen as the epicentre of morality have regrettably become platforms where immorality of unimaginable dimensions takes place.
Some people have opined that some pastors and Imams who indulge in rape do so for ritual purposes in order to keep a pact with the diabolic source of their power and wealth. Of course, every social depravity attracts its own conspiracy theory. Therefore we must give a chance to any kind of explanations especially when our critical reasoning fails to yield immediate answers.
We must collectively stand up against rape no matter who is involved. Rape cannot cease to be a crime because our pastor, relation, friend or boss is involved in it. Therefore to hide under any kind of bias to rationalize rape is not only wicked but also inhuman. Indeed, how many men of public standing today can still retain their positions if all rape victims come forward to recount their experiences? Once the truth is established, let the law take its full course.
Dr. Adiele writes from Lagos via [email protected]
