NO, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu

By Prince Peter Awele Odor    On July 1, 2022, Mr Adedamola Saka reported in the Guardian under the title “Lagos empowers 310 female students on sexual, gender-based violence” (p. 9) that the governor of Lagos State through the Ministry of Education will “create a sustainable social structure in educational institutions that will help debunk […]

By Prince Peter Awele Odor 

 

On July 1, 2022, Mr Adedamola Saka reported in the Guardian under the title “Lagos empowers 310 female students on sexual, gender-based violence” (p. 9) that the governor of Lagos State through the Ministry of Education will “create a sustainable social structure in educational institutions that will help debunk socio-cultural misconceptions, dismantle patriarchy, encourage gender equality, bring about behavioural as well as attitudinal change and ultimately raise empowered girls”.  

This violates the rights of our girl children to be brought up by their parents and the rights of their parents to change their behaviours and attitudes in the process of bringing them up if they do not exhibit moral, spiritual, or religious attitudes and behaviours. 

The duty of educational institutions is to preserve the moral, spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviours of children, not to change them. Feminists, not all women, are guilty of indoctrinating and changing these.  

They provide the textbooks with which children are taught literature in primary and secondary schools which indoctrinates and corrupts their attitudes and behaviours by making them deviants, wayward and authorities to their parents. They also secured compulsory study and sitting of biology in JSS3 and SSS3, and the teaching of “sex education” which have made children sexual perverts. Evidence: the recent sexual activity of a mere 10-year-old female student of Chrisland Schools in a Dubai hotel. Sexual intercourse, contraception, pregnancy and abortion by teenage girls are common and increasing.  

Concerning the so-called “socio-cultural misconceptions”, our socio-cultural practices are moral, spiritual, religious and necessary for an efficient and sustainable administration of family and social affairs and for healthy interpersonal relationships. 

Feminists are not wiser than God who inspired the socio-cultural practices. They have been replacing them with the socio-cultural practices of Americans systematically while the consequence of this in the US is dissolute sexual culture: early sex, high contraception, abortion and infertility rates; gayism and lesbianism; very high divorce rate, loss of interest in marriage, many unmarried women as single parents, and domestic violence, many of which result in death.  

It is noted that these entirely condemnable sexual, domestic and social cultures have been manifesting in Nigeria because the federal and state governments support feminists. To show that their claim of “socio-cultural misconception” is absolutely wrong, I consider next “patriarchy”, “gender”, “gender equality” and “empowerment”.  

Patriarchy was established by God and not by man or the society. Proofs: God created man distinctly (Gen. 2: 7) and created woman out of man (Gen. 2: 21-23). God subordinated woman to man by giving man the authority to name woman two times (Gen. 2: 22-23 and Gen. 3: 20), and by making woman a helper to man (Gen. 2: 18); also by decreeing that man will rule over woman in marriage (Gen. 3: 16). Man marries woman and establishes a home which woman moves into at marriage (Gen. 2: 24). Wives were commanded to submit to their husbands because God made man the head of woman (Eph. 5: 22-23; 1 Pet. 3: 1-6). 

Because these are the divine sources of patriarchy, it is not a socio-cultural misconception. It is also not “a social construct” as American feminists claim, to destroy it.  

In the bible written by American feminists they rejected patriarchy, subordinate status for woman vis-à-vis man established by God, and submission to man demanded of woman by God. They asserted “gender equality”, “respect for women”, and changed all places “man” appears to “woman”. Hence, a feminist group in Nigeria is Womanifesto. Now, they want to use law and education to impose their desire on men most firmly in order to have authority and control over men. Today’s men should learn from the error of the first man to avoid the punishment of God (Gen. 3: 17-19) or what men suffer in the US and UK when they have disputes with women or divorce.  

As for “gender” and “gender equality”, these have no equivalence in any Nigerian language by any consideration. They are strategic social constructs by Americans used to replace “man” and “woman”, for changing traditional moral domestic and social practices. No two people — man and man, woman and woman, or woman and man — are equal by any consideration of equality. No one in Lagos State government is equal with the governor; no one in the Ministry of Education is equal with the commissioner; and no one in any educational institution is equal with the head of that institution. Inequality exists in all industries and economists call this “division of labour”, not “discrimination” or “oppression”.    

“Gender equality” creates the attitude which emboldens a woman to be aggressive or violent towards a man, sometimes to slap a man and dare him to retaliate. “Empowerment” makes mothers dump their three-month-old babies in commercial childcare homes or impose care for them on their husbands. These besides causing quarrel and violence do grave moral and psychological harm to children.   

Concerning “empowerment,” what girls need is moral character. This has enormous power! It charms or persuades effectively, especially in marriage. Other sources of power girls need are children-bearing, cooking and giving food to their husbands. These are all effective. 

“Gender equality” as a new source of power has denied many girls marriage. Asserting it physically or with words causes domestic violence and divorce. Asserting it sexually causes childlessness. Childlessness makes wives insecure in marriage and causes domestic violence and divorce. Governor Sanwo-Olu should obey God and not feminists (Act. 5: 29) to avoid God’s punishment (Gen. 3: 17-19). Christ on equality (Phil. 2: 6). Its rewards (Phil, 2: 9-11.