Ese Oruru and other girls

The saga of Yunusa  Dahiru and Ese Oruru is one that would stay in our memory for a long time , particularly because of the way it was twisted to portray  Hausa people and Islam in bad light, making them all guilty of a love between two teenagers. Anyway, the Hausa people are the favourite […]

The saga of Yunusa  Dahiru and Ese Oruru is one that would stay in our memory for a long time , particularly because of the way it was twisted to portray  Hausa people and Islam in bad light, making them all guilty of a love between two teenagers. Anyway, the Hausa people are the favourite whipping boy that anything real or imagined about them and Islam  would become a national issue. One wonders at times if such hate is because of the love of Nigeria or has some underlining of fear, or envy.
In any case, while Yunusa shouldn’t have taken Ese from Bayelsa State to his village in Kano State no matter what if he respects his parents since his father told him not to bring her when he told him he was going to,  Ese’s parents that have become heroes of sorts should also take some blame.
According to reports, the so-called abducter of Ese, that is Yunusa was not a stranger to  Ese’s parents; Mr Charles Oruru and  his wife Rose.  He used to sell water to  Rose and therefore was well known to them. The parents knew about the relationship between their daughter and Yunusa, and that is when they should have done everything possible to discourage their daughter,  given her age.
This girl is something else, because when her mother went to take her back to Bayelsa she refused to go. I hope there are not many such girls that can stand up to their parents and act as they like at such young age.
Yunusa’s parents should have taken Ese back to her parents and not to have succumbed to the will of Ese. His father, Alhaji Dahiru Bala  said he allowed her to stay because Ese was desperate for Yunusa. Some even said she threatened to commit suicide, and look at the pain it caused many people that don’t even know them from Adam.
 It is good to protect the girl-child,  which is great,  but it should not be done in isolation for political and religious bigotry. For example there was a story carried by Daily Trust on February 16, 2016 : ‘Concern over teenage pregnancies in Kutepa.’ Kutepa is a community in Bwari Area Council of the FCT, Abuja. The story said that due to the distance of secondary school from the community, the girls were often enticed by men.
Patience , 16, had two children and dropped out in SS2 due to pregnancy. Doris who is 15 years also a mother, dropped out of school as well.
After the story was published I was waiting for the human rights brigades and the advocates of the girl-child to come out in their numbers and help the cause of these poor children. But as expected not even one word was heard, because apparently the problem of these girls does not have the political and religious elements to grab national attention and possibly foreign donors.
Their choice of where to advocate and where not, is one of the reasons people are suspicious of their intents.
So these teenage girls are left to their own devices just because there is no Senator among their boyfriends to make headlines and suddenly make everybody conscious of the need to protect the girl-child.
Does the situation of these girls then be dismissed as their way of life just because no big man or Islam is involved?  Is the offence no longer an offence then because it involves the local people themselves?
Children should be protected anywhere they may be, it is however stretching it that even where it is the ‘norm’ for girls as young as 12 or 13 to sleep with men with the knowledge of their parents   the people are spewing venom against the Hausa people and Islam on this issue.
My advice is that they should go back to the drawing board and educate their people on the ills of such behaviour to move them forward, but definitely they should not ignore their people’s (in)morality while disparaging others out of malice. Charity they say,  begins at home.
And what happened between Ese and Yunusa is not a normal thing  among Hausa people, far from it. No matter what,  if a girl follows a boy to his parents’ house to stay and marry him; it would be seen as strange and alien, and not a Hausa culture.
For whatever reason, Ese was converted to Islam. But reading comments on it one would think that it is the agenda of Muslims to go on rampage to the South, abduct girls and convert them to Islam.
But if it were so, they needn’t have to go as far as Bayelsa. They can just go to Sabongari  in Kano to convert southern Christians,  so it is not logical.
Parents and even children should learn a lesson from the saga of Ese and Yunusa. If children do what their parents tell them, this wouldn’t have happened.