‘The more stringent punishment for rape the better’

There is an end of year report that says Kano has the highest cases of rape in the country, what is your take on this?I have also heard the findings of that particular report which said that the prevalence of rape is still high in Kano and that it is still the highest in the […]

There is an end of year report that says Kano has the highest cases of rape in the country, what is your take on this?
I have also heard the findings of that particular report which said that the prevalence of rape is still high in Kano and that it is still the highest in the country, even though I’m not quite sure who the sponsors of the report are.
My take on this is that the incidence of rape has risen globally. What is happening in Kano and what is happening in Nigeria is part of a global phenomenon if you are following the issues of what is happening in India, in Japan, in USA, in UK, few reports in Kenya, in Ghana and all over the place. So I will say that Kano is not an island.
We are not insulated from happenings around us. Again part of our reason is that our population is the highest in Nigeria and we have the highest number of young people. For that reason whatever index you are considering the Kano index will come out extremely high; whether it is a positive index or a negative index. Therefore I strongly believe that the size that has been noticed is partly due to our population size and the size of the young people in our population.

What do you think are the factors responsible for the rise?
Some of the factors especially in our context are that we have relegated our religious practices; we have relegated the injunctions of our creator in our lives. Otherwise, if somebody is a good practising Muslim I see no place in his life for rape, for promiscuity and other such vices. So in general I think people have become too ‘modernize’, ‘westernize’, we are copying cultures of other people that  are not suitable to our own way of life.
And there is this proliferation of electronic devices, electronic media, social media, and the internet and so on which therefore brings issues to the doorstep of young people. There is also in our context the issue we are fighting, that is the issue of child labor and hawking by the girl child.
We believe if young girls are exposed to this type of practices, is like the parents are deliberately exposing them to this kind of abuses.  So the rise in the number of girls that you see on the streets, carrying trays, hawking small items, I think have contributed to that.

Based on the records available, which category of people are the main victims?
Based on the cases reported to the ministry or to Hisbah or to Ministry of Justice and other places, we are seeing younger and younger victims to the extent that we have in our record a two-year old girl that has been raped. So the victims are very young and innocent girls and sometimes boys.

What is the state government doing to curtail this menace?
Government is attacking this menace on several fronts. The first is that it has re-enacted the law on rape with more stringent punishments and the Ministry of Justice is being compelled to ensure that justice is being dispensed speedily.
The number of cases prosecuted has risen tremendously especially in the past one year. Apart from that government has embarked on massive sensitization campaign for people to know the dangers they are exposing their children to and how to prevent it. The enlightenment campaign also covers the empowerment of the parents to know that when such things happen, these are the steps that they need to take.
They need to report immediately to the authorities, they need to take the child immediately to the hospital to obtain medical examination before the child is washed up. And parents are also sensitized to know that government is solidly behind them.
When this type of issue occurs, especially the Ministry of Women Affairs and the Hisbah board, serve as a major support base for parents and victims.

Do you have centre for counseling of victims and their parents?
We don’t have a designated counseling centre as such but our staff in the ministry are seasoned welfare officers. They are seasoned guidance and counseling experts trained on that aspect. What we do is that we pay visit to the parents of the victims and sometimes the victims are brought to the ministry for counseling and follow-ups.
We give a lot of psychosocial counseling to the victims so that they could overcome the trauma they have gone through. All this is in addition to economic empowerment. Whenever these things occur in this society you see that there is a lot of stigma as far as the woman is concerned. Therefore there is the need to raise her up, to dust her and empower her so that she can become self reliant and become integrated into the society.

There is this clamour for capital punishment for rapist such as castration and life imprisonment, what is your take on this?
I’m one of those that believe that the more stringent the punishment, the better because rape, I believe is a crime against humanity especially if you look at the age of the victims. I have in my record the case of a seven year-old, who was raped, and she was not only raped but as a result of the rape, she developed VVF disease.
We supported her; we took her to the hospital where she was repaired. But when she was discharged from the hospital, after some months she developed some complications which we are still working on together with the Ministry of Health. So I sincerely believe that the stiffer the punishment the better for the society.

What advice do you have for parents?
My advice to parents is to be very mindful of the kind of people they are exposing their children to. This is because we found out that some of the perpetrators of this offence are people that are close to these children. When I say close I mean the drivers that take these children to the school, I mean people like the security men that are supposed to protect them when they are in their homes, I mean sometimes the houseboys or the almajirai that run errands for their parents and in some cases even uncles. So my advice to parents is not to trust anybody as far as their young children are concerned.