The Boy Child.

Africa is one of the harshest and must difficult places to live in--that is you get to live in. Life, especially for men in must parts of the region is marked by an unending struggle to see through diseases, ethnic cleansing, conflict, poverty, forced Labour, sexual harassment and other quandaries from birth, through childhood, adulthood and even death. In fact, the journey of a boy child, born in the African soil, starts from the day of conception.

So much research, statistics, writings, oratory and action has been dedicated to the girl child, but nothing substantive has been done for the embattled boy child.

Women empowerment has so far been a great achievement following the vigorous campaigns and guidelines initiated globally, with a solitary endeavour to safeguard, uplift and empower the rights and status of the girl child.

On the contrary, boy child has been forgotten. As a result, they have been rendered or rather subject to all kinds of inhuman societal mischief, and unending life-struggle.

The male counterparts are left to fight on their own; they hustle and tussle to make it through without the equal opportunities, support, guidance and protection showered and instilled in favour of women.

While people are quick to rush to the rescue of a girl who is raped, they don't show the same vigour and urgency to a boy who is sodomized, tortured, forced to take drugs or compelled to be a child soldier--in the cases of abduction and recruitment of young boys by the Boko Haram, Al-Qaida linked militia al-shabab and others.

A girl child is always considered vulnerable. You can recall 230 secondary school Chibok girls who were kidnapped from their dorm rooms by the Boko Haram terrorist group here in Nigeria mid-April 2014, vigorous campaigns and awareness was initiated under "#BringBackOurGirls" hash-tags. Do we see such campaigns to reclaim back our boys who have been abducted by these same group to carry out terrorism activities, killing innocent people?

The heinous act of rape against girls makes me angry as well. However, over the years, similar stories appear from time to time in the newspapers, and other media platforms about sodomized boys, and all society has done is look the other way, hoping the cases will just die a natural death. At best, the society have raised only faint whimpers and gone back to sleep as if nothing has happened.

The damage instilled on sodomized boys is just the same as that done to raped girls; it involves the destruction of the identity and worth of the child in his own eyes, in the eyes of the perpetrators--his oppressors--and in the eyes of his extended family and society.

Sodomy is as much an assault and violation of the victim as is female rape. Actually, the distinction is only a question of semantics. The feeling of desolation, devaluation, worthlessness and powerlessness that grip the victims cannot be put into words.

The number of organizations that advocate for female rights are overwhelming. Anything tagged the "girl-child" is a gold mine for these ever mushrooming organizations.

The female species are being preached more for their market potential than anything else, which might explain why the boy child with his low commercial appeal has been sidelined.

As the issue of women empowerment gains prominence, the girl child is increasingly climbing the corporate ladder. The boy child on the other hand, is neglected and threatened species. This trend is worrying.

When women looks at a man, they want to see security, ability to provide and responsibility. However, very little is being done to mold the boy child to grow up into this 'ideal man' that the society expects. This makes me to say that if you like, reshape all the girl child in the world without doing so for just one boy child, that boy child you neglected will end up causing menace to the female counterparts, But he would have been a responsible adult if you had looked into him on time.

In northern Nigeria and in west pokot country, Kenya for instance, boys' education is sacrificed for the sake of livestock. The boy child is introduced to grazing cattle at a very tender age of five. He protect his community and livestock. This denies the child his rights to education and a better future.

In our African setting, government are alarmed by the rate at which young boys are opting to abandon school. Female figures are viewed more in tertiary institutions. Most boys due to lack of fund reduced to the streets to hawk, some rummage in garbage heaps in the city suburbs to collect empty mineral water bottles to sell and earn some money. Others who couldn't find a means of survival reduced to cultism. Begging and looting, no NGO looks into their issues, they consider them to be wayward but a misbehaved girl child always have an excuse that justifies her actions.

Chronic alcoholism is also wasting away the male youths especially in the ghettos in the watchful eyes of the community leaders and authorities.

In central Kenya for instance, alcoholism is a big problem. Most of those who drink are youths age 17-28 years. Some time back, women in that region held public demonstrations calling upon the Government to intervene and save their men from alcohol consumption.

They said the men were enslaved by the bottle and had neglected not only their responsibilities as bread winners and protections of families but had denied their women their conjugal rights.

Young boys in Africa have also been subjected into conscripting to act of ancient traditional rituals against their wills. For instance the painful traditional circumcision, and ancient practice of facial and body scarification.

The Bagisu culture for instance (from the western slops of Mountain Elgon, Uganda), together with the Sebeyi neighbours, are the only major Ugandan practicing circumcision in a barbaric manner also known as Imbalu. For instance, before circumcision, the young boys must stand outside in the cold weather, and receive a cold shower to cleanse them. In Africa, it is believed that circumcision initiation elevates an individual from childhood to adulthood.

People would tell the boy, "if you kick the knife, we shall kill you, if you run away from the knife, your society will disown you." The boy must exhibit signs of a grown man, by carrying a heavy spear, herding a large heard of livestock, or kill a deadly wild animal like a lion and so on.

The girl child on the other hand is luckier. She is spared of such torments and trials to exhibit signs of a grown woman. Try initiating the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to any of the young girls in the name of traditional right of passage and you will end up in prison. I am left to wonder, do we have selective gender laws that only work on the boy child and spares the girl child?

Gender equity notions are erroneous and deceptive. Feminism and feminists are either lopsided or self centered. If we De - construct the "truth" from a philosophical point of view, we find that more boys end up in crime than girls; and research shows that more men die faster than women.

Once a boy child is branded and labeled by the society, he keeps the tag into adulthood. Society neither forgives nor forgets the transgressions of a boy child easily.

The abuse of a boy child--whether physical, verbal, psychological or sexual--is always swept under the carpet. But if a girl child is concerned, all hell breaks loose.

Why should the boy child of today suffer just marginalized? Aren't we also creating disparities that would need future rectification in the process? By the way, I thought the fight was gender equality? I thought the whole concept of feminism was gender balancing? What we have seen so far by these female folks is purely extremism. There is nothing equal in their fight. Rather they fight for superiority, it's all a scam.

Both boys and girls need to be educated and mentored. We will be going wrong as a region if we give much attention to the girl child and forget that tomorrow will come when we will need the boys to become men.

I, Onyebumuo Ngozi refuse to put women first. Neither do I put men first, I simply put humans first. That's true balancing other than a hypocritical pursuit.

If having said all this, and you having read all these, yet find nothing wrong with feminism, then you need help. Having said this, I pen down.

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What you've done in this writeup is to display a height of boldness that many will like to shove aside. What i see about the boy-child on the street worries me more than i can express and there's no need beating about the bush, it's as you've said it. At this present time, the boy child feels more powerless than ever especially if he's from the unlucky part of the society. As an educator, i've interacted with the 'unlucky ones' among the girls and boys and i can say the girls are easily redeemable than the boys. Apart from writing as activists for the boy child, how do we address the waiting disaster from neglected boys?