Is not this a lamentable thing?
Daud Olatunji of The Punch recently interviewed Amoda Bola, a 49-year-old father, arrested for raping (and impregnating) his 14-year-old daughter. Apart from the fact that there is no journalistic justification for interviewing a vile rapist, a man who raped his own daughter, the tenor of the interview is beyond disgusting. Tueh! Olatunji asks irrelevant question […]
Daud Olatunji of The Punch recently interviewed Amoda Bola, a 49-year-old father, arrested for raping (and impregnating) his 14-year-old daughter. Apart from the fact that there is no journalistic justification for interviewing a vile rapist, a man who raped his own daughter, the tenor of the interview is beyond disgusting. Tueh! Olatunji asks irrelevant question after irrelevant question. “Did you find your daughter sexually attractive to you?” “Do you realise that what you did is a taboo in Yoruba culture?” And “Who (sic) did you deflower her?” to which Bola responds, “I didn’t deflower her. She was not a virgin when it happened.” A few questions down the line, Olatunji – to whom the question of the girl’s virginity appears to be of great importance, asks again, “You also said your daughter was not a virgin and that some men slept with her on different occasions. Has she ever had an abortion?” And then, “How will you describe the character of your daughter?” to which the father responds that “She is gentle but stubborn. She is well exposed as well.”
The whole goal of the interview appears to be to slut shame the victim so as to make the crime less abhorrent. If she’s ‘exposed,’ if she’s had an abortion, if she’s not a virgin then perhaps her father’s crime isn’t as terrible as it appears. And of course, Amoda blames his extended lapse in probity on juju. “You said what happened was a mystery to you. Did you seek help?” Olatunji asks. The responsibility-shifting-unfit-to-be-a-parent rapist responds with “Yes, I did seek help from a herbalist and he told me it was a spiritual issue. He told me to make a sacrifice which I did. I made the sacrifice just the Sunday before my arrest.” Plus Punch, plus Daud Olatunji, plus Amoda Bola: Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
Rape is underreported in Nigeria. We all know that. When I was at UNN, there were male students who were known to be rapists, and who didn’t seem at all perturbed by the label because they knew that the shame of the crime lay with the victim. Sexual assault was a hobby; what was there to be ashamed of, or to be troubled by? And sometimes, it was used to punish girls who ‘misbehaved.’ Back then, a friend at UniJos told me of a female student who was raped by a guy she’d been rude to, “to teach her a lesson.” The assault was never reported even though everyone knew of it.
There are reasons why victims are unwilling to report the crime against them. In 2021, an Amnesty International report stated that in Nigeria, “rape persists at crisis levels with most survivors denied justice, rapists avoiding prosecution, and hundreds of cases of rape going unreported due to pervasive corruption, stigma and victim-blaming.” And not even a 14-year-old raped by her own father is safe from being held liable for the crime against her. A child, whose father, by her own account, brought other men into their home to rape her in exchange for money. Tufiakwa!
The only reason Amoda is in custody is that somehow, his daughter had the courage to report him. And fortunately, the officers she reported to didn’t laugh her out of their station or deny that the rape occurred. Some years ago, the Assistant Commissioner of Police in Abia State, J.G. Micloth, refused to investigate a gang rape case caught on video because “the girl had not resisted,” and even if she hadn’t consented, maybe she was the girlfriend of one of the rapists and he wanted to “teach her a lesson.” In 2021, a reporter for The Whistler went undercover as a rape victim to a police station in Abuja to report her ‘assault.’ One officer wanted to know if she was a virgin, another one offered to ‘help’ her outside his working hours and another asked her how she was dressed, and then told her, “I blame you, you shouldn’t be out by that time of the day.”
My hope is that Amoda’s daughter, so violently wronged by the man she calls father, will not be disappointed by the system. I hope she gets the help that she needs, poor thing, and that Bola Amoda rots in prison. I dash ndi Punch and their journalist with some common sense. Never, ever run a stupid, rape apologist article like this again.