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Sentencing minors to illicit marriages
Sentencing minors to illicit marriages
Posted By: JULIET UMEHon: March 12, 2016In: Living, Saturday MirrorNo Comments Print Email



Ese Oruru’s saga throws light on a phenomenon that may have been with us for a long time, reports JULIET UMEH

Hell was almost let lose last week at the news of the alleged abduction/ forced marriage of Miss Ese Rita Oruru, a teenage girl from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, who was taken away last year from her mother’s shop in her home state by a Kano indigene named Yinusa. For the parents of Ese, Mr Charles and Mrs Rose Oruru, life apparently became a hell of sort while trying to secure the release of their 13-year-old child. Before Ese regained her freedom last week, her mother, Mrs Oruru, said the man who forcefully took their child away was not ready to release her. In a chat with Mr Oruru, Ese’s father, he informed Saturday Mirror the genesis of Ese’s ordeal. “My daughter was abducted from my wife’s shop. My wife sells food and the boy in question is one of her customers. That fateful day, the boy came into the shop and mysteriously lured her out.

And when it happened I didn’t keep quiet, I reported to the police. I went to Kano with two police officers; we stayed there for one week. We have been travelling up and down to Kano. This is Nigeria, things that concerns big men are different from poor man’s own. I am very happy that my daughter has been released and talking about the punishment, the law will take its course. Nigerian government knows how to punish someone who is trafficker or kidnapper.” Mr Oruru is appreciative of the efforts of Child Protection Network, CPN, a nongovernmental oraganisation, which in the past one year that their daughter was in the strange home of the abductors, relentlessly searched for her until she was found.

“This is the agency that worked for me. I cannot commend the police, because had the matter been left for the police to singularly handle, it would have ended in disappointment. The police did not do any work, though they accompanied me to Kano. When we returned from Kano, they failed to do a follow-up until CPN picked it up again and other agencies joined them,” he said. He also berated the Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, for not playing positive role because he acted under pressure mounted on him by the general public and government agencies. “It was when all the agencies in Yenegoa and Abuja criticised him that he acted, but earlier, he didn’t make any attempt because he was the one that collaborated with the council to hold the girl. So I didn’t see what the Emir did.

The tension was too much for him because of the suspicion that the case could cause a communal crisis and that’s why the Inspector General of Police, IGP, forced him to release the girl,” he added. But other reports have it that Ese was abducted in August last year from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, by Yinusa, and taken all the way to Kano, where she was allegedly hypnotised, brainwashed, converted to Islam, renamed Aisha and married off as a child-bride. Many Nigerians therefore called on the IGP to intervene and Emir of Kano to facilitate the immediate release of the innocent teenage girl. Finally, Ese who turned 14 on February 22, was released to her parents after much pressure by the general public and civil society groups.

The matter has not ceased to attract condemnation in every sense of it since it came to the public notice. Like Ese the 14-year-old house help of Malam Yahai, a businessman who hails from Jigawa, and his wife, was not lucky because she suffered emotional torture as she was ravished of her innocence. The girl whose identity was not revealed was allegedly put in a family way by her master. The ugly result of the unholy romance between her and her master, was discovered few weeks back.

Although her master, Malam Yahai, pleaded not guilty to the charge of impregnating the youth brought against him at the Garki Local Government Area Court, the presiding judge nonetheless called for a further investigation of the case, adding that a date for next hearing of the case will be fixed after the police have concluded investigation. While narrating her ordeal before Magistrate Aliyu Roni of the Garki Local Government Area Court, Maugatarin Bawan Allah Village, the girl said that on several occasions whenever his wife was out of the house, her master had sexual relation with her, therefore she insisted that he must take responsibility for the care of her son.

Last Tuesday, as the nation was celebrating the discovery of Ese and her transfer to Abuja, the nation’s capital, three girls of Babington Macaulay Secondary School, Ikorodu, Lagos, were abducted by gun-wielding gang who stormed their classrooms during the hours of evening prep after gaining entry into the school through a hole dug through the school’s wall. The abduction of the students attracted prompt response by the Lagos State Governor Akinwumi Ambode and security chiefs to the school and drawing strategy that will lead to their rescue. In Surulere, Lagos, Mrs. Bilikis Balogun, mother of, Nofisat, is a sad woman, because a 30-year-old man identified as Ikechukwu Obasi, allegedly had carnal knowledge of her nine-year-old girl, when she returned from an errand he had sent her.

Nofisat’s mother, who narrated her daughter’s ordeal, told newsmen that even though the accused had left his apartment, she would want the full weight of the law decide the punishment he deserves for defiling her daughter. While narrating when and how the debasing incident took place, she said she was in the market when her daughter came crying, and told her the story about how their neighbour deflowered her. Sunshine State, Ondo, is also represented in the social evil by the case of incest by Femi Orojo and a 13-year-old girl, who was also allegedly raped and impregnated by the Okitipupa, Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo Stateborn man, who is old enough to be her step father.

According to reports, the accused had allegedly committed the offence in October 2015, while his wife, the mother of the victim, Bunmi, was away from home. The hapless mother however explained that her husband was at large after confessing to the crime but unfortunately, her innocent 13-year-old was already five months’ pregnant when it was discovered last week. However, it was not well-understood why the girl was unwilling to establish the identity of the man who put her in the family way, but in a statement, she mentioned that Orojo had promised to kill her if she revealed the illicit affair to her mother. Although the Ondo State Police Spokesman, Mr. Femi Joseph, said the suspect had not been arrested, but investigation into the matter was still ongoing. Recently, the Nigerian press was replete with reports of amorous affairs between hell-bound masters, step fathers, guardians, and the worst of it all is that these illicit affairs were between those uncouth men and young girls under their care leaving out their legally married wives.

Sadly, some of these evil men go as far as violating younger children of two or three years. Now questions begging for answer include why are older men having developed sexual appetite or getting attracted to underage girls, not considering their ages and knowledge to make responsible decisions about coitus. Experts say perhaps some of the reasons this ugly situation keeps occurring may be because children of nowadays mature fast and develop early adult features. Diet is by far the most important factor – medics and psychotherapists both point to improved feeding being the cause of change in children’s bodies over the past century.

Apart from feeding which may result in precocious bodies, “many other things about young girls turn on men. These include weight, average or a little above. Lips, medium or large- sized. Hips and buttocks: huge, wide, or flat. Breast, not too small, not too large; not droopy or saggy, but appealing sexually. Good complexion, clean head hair, intelligence, assertiveness, having initiative, a sense of humour and attractive looks. Many young girls are naturally sexy. They wear clothes that are too colourful, sexy and attractive. Everyone that sees them thinks they are ready for any man because their sexy image gives a wrong signal to men,” an old mother stated.

Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says: “The best way not to go into puberty is starvation. Early puberty is about great nutrition, in the classic sense of getting access to good protein, good vitamins and minerals.” He underlines that earlier puberty is often accompanied by a commensurate growth in height – this is particularly evident among Japanese girls over the past half century. However, having a sexual attraction to children is not normal and never will be,” he maintained. While the release of Ese was lingering, a lot of furious Nigerians were voicing out, amongst them is a social analyst and Director, Corporate Communications and CSR, Airtel Nigeria, Emeka Opara, who could not believe at the mention of one of the most respected traditional rulers in the North, the Emir of Kano, the former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. Opara said it is bad enough that such indiscretions and criminal abuse of the rights of children are happening in the northern parts of the country, with the knowledge (and sometimes active participation) of the elite.

“To go across the Niger and actually abduct an underage Christian, forcefully convert her to Islam and marry her off is nothing but an act of deliberate provocation and an attempt to further inflame the already smouldering fire of ethnic and religious sentiments across the country,” he declared. A mother, Mrs. Olufunke Phillips, averred that under no circumstance should this evil act be condoled. “A 13-year-old girl is a child. People should stop saying she consented to follow the man to Kano. She is a minor. She cannot give consent. You can’t take a child out of her State and away from her family, take her to Kano, convert her to your religion, change her name then marry her.

This is not a jungle and we are not wild animals,” she asserted. She believes that Yinusa and everybody involved in the abduction saga should be arrested. “We need to at least get some things right in this country.” She asked: “How do you explain that in 2016, in this day and age, a man can kidnap your child, change her name and forcefully marry her?” Bottom of Form A social commentator, Samuel Ogbonnaya, probed: “How on earth does any sane mind accept that a 13-year-old girl has the maturity to accept to be married and her religion forcefully changed without the express approval of her parents? I thought it is the convention that parents approve their kids to be married and are believed to be the ones to handover their child to whoever that has followed the process? This is one major reason this country needs to reconsider the question of unity.

My values, religion, tradition, culture and morals forbid situations like this one.” However some other people believe that globalisation, internet and celebrity culture, which expose children to the adult world too soon, is a contributing factor to this menace. “Images of thin or overtly sexy celebrities, magazines aimed at seven to 13-year-olds but with content more suitable for older teenagers, and the easy availability of suggestive images, pornographic or bawdy pictures are reasons children grow up too quickly,” Mrs. Busayo Odebiyi, a secondary school teacher admitted. “Children need growth and emotionally maturity to cope with what life throws at them,” says Mr. Ejike Onyekwele, a civil servant.

“The pace of modern life is so fast that it is even snatching away the precious years of childhood. A toxic combination of marketing, media and peer pressure means children no longer want to be seen as children, even when as parents we know they still are,” he said. But he suggested that there should be a radical rethink in society to revalue childhood and protect it as a precious time – “not time to put pressure on children to grow up far too fast by engaging them in one form of illicit affair or the another,” he advised. But Mr. James Udoma, a teacher in Unique Comprehensive Secondary School, Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, who totally condemned the act of violating children, says if kids go through puberty early; that does not mean they will become sexually active earlier because their emotional maturity will not match their sexual development.

Making his point on this important subject, a gynaecologist and obstetrician, at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Dr. Joy Agbara, totally condemned the idea of putting underage girls into family way because of its negative health consequences as a young girl is often not psychologically, physically and sexually mature. Speaking further, Dr Agbara, stated that such pregnancy results in complications that may pose too herculean to them – gynaecologists. The doctor explained: “A teenager is still a child, an involving woman who is still requiring care. For instance, the pelvic bone of a woman is formed as a child, but it grows to the point where one gets within the reproduction stage where baby can pass through. And when there is teenage pregnancy where the pelvic girdle is not well developed, that is why you have some of the obstructed labour in these girls and the consequences.”

lalasticlala food have come.

see as i dey shame for them. big disappointment!

disgraceful and evil.

in nnamdi kanu's voice, paedophiles and terrorists.

where is the hope for Nigeria if the future(our children) are threated with such disdain. wat a nation.

Worst institution ever approved in Nigeria by the third term hungry thief.

Tunami:
in nnamdi kanu's voice, paedophiles and terrorists.

u can say that again.

oluwafreshkid:

ogbeni this is not the time for blank post, ur suggestion on how to deal with this will be helpful.

Tunami:
in nnamdi kanu's voice, paedophiles and terrorists.

They say he is a mad man but even mad man sometimes state the facts.

lalasticlala seun ishilove mukina fp matters

msheww..how was she kidnapped and forced into marriage.