Nigeria - Courtesy of Wikipedia

Touching the untouchable

This is probably one of the most difficult issues to raise in Nigeria but one that requires objective and intellectual engagement more than anything else.

The systems that we have adopted that are inimical to progress and development and a good deal of them need to be abrogated, probably proscribed, in some cases strictly regulated and brought under the purview of the civil authorities so as to eliminate the bias and the sentiment that tolerates abuse.

The Time magazine published an article last weekend about Nigeria [1] and what jumped out at me was the Tweet posted that was used to bring footfall to the story.

I wept

 “Sometimes they fight dogs for food.”

I guessed things were bad in Nigeria with the poverty, health and security situations but not this bad that children will be jostling with dogs for food with the risk of getting bitten and all the attendant issues that might follow like contracting rabies and much else.

There are serious humanitarian and child welfare issues that need to be addressed with urgency, if only those who matter can allow themselves to be moved with compassion above all else.

In the wrong place

The first paragraph alone presents a setting that is almost primitive and it is mediaeval; beyond the religious accoutrements on the walls is the sad story of a very ill boy of 15 with his younger brother nursing him, if there was anything he could do in the situation apart from providing comfort by his presence.

A child in the 21^st Century ill with malaria and typhoid fever should be in hospital being tended by modern medicine with the hope for recovery. The story is he had not eaten since the night before and the only hope for food was from leftovers in a neighbouring house.

The unwritten part of this travesty is if the sick were going hungry, there is no telling what will be the case of the nominally healthy and if the many were going hungry you can imagine after scrapping with dogs with the scratching and bites it will take the unusual milk of human kindness for that food to be given to the weak.

Where is our heart for the children?

The plight of children in Nigeria is a serious one and we need to put away many of the preconceived notions built on long held views to deal with what is both shameful and disgraceful – no creed or doctrine can be seen to condone or tolerate this, talk less of revel in this unconscionable evil masquerading as schooling for some higher purpose.

There should be no reason for children with living parents to live the existence of those deprived of love, of care, of consideration and the basic elements of food, health, good education and access to opportunity that many others take for granted.

It is incumbent on the elite and the intellectuals of communities where these activities thrive to excoriate the system in totality, condemning the perpetrators and offering progressive steps to child welfare must take priority along with adequate resources to redress the situation.

An unsure future

The more one reads into the article, it is evident that this is an emergency. Children hundreds of miles from their homes in squalid surroundings and unregulated institutions that portend to offer the kids a future though none of which is evident from the training or the activities they are forced to indulge in to keep body and soul together.

Begging in the streets, no matter how palatable the promoters try to make it is a low esteem complex that reaffirms a state of destitution, a lack of opportunity and a pliable mob that could be conscripted into nefarious activities of unscrupulous lords.

Besides, these people, children and by all standards citizens of Nigeria for the failings of their families, their communities and their governments are easy prey for all sorts of abuse from the basic withdrawal of support through physical abuse and the absence of essential care to sexual abuse and possibly murder which can happen with impunity; they all need to have their rights championed and asserted by all well-meaning people throughout Nigeria and beyond.

We need to talk

For a country so great and resourceful, it is a shame and disgrace that our children live in these conditions from day to day and there is no telling how many more in the name of evidently bad traditions have lost their minds and lives to untold destitution and the indifference that has made this evil an untouchable minefield.

It is time to talk about these matters, some practices need to be outlawed, others proscribed, some institutions need to be regulated by unbiased secular authorities, there is no doubt that some sacred cows will need to be butchered without mercy and the conditions in these environments must be raised to meet standards of boarding schools that provide proper meals, a strict curriculum, vocational training and proper inspection regimes.

Children should not be on the streets begging and proprietors should be held responsible for ensuring that when their wards are externally graded, they are within the aptitude and abilities of their peers in other public institutions.

We have deferred too long to systems that offer no functional development in our communities, regardless of our persuasions, service still matters and there is dignity in labour but that requires we train up children to be productive members of their communities at first and hopefully to the nation at large.

Source

[1] Nigeria’s Abandoned Youth: Are They Potential Recruits for Militants?

When this news filtered through the Nigerian Twitter folk yesterday I was not curious enough to determine what they were talking about. Somehow, my curiosity is not as piqued if certain news stories seem to derive from a rumour mill without credible sources but one must say that certain bits of news might well debut on Twitter long before the news organs pick it up.

What was a bit disconcerting about it was the tweets reported a very heinous and grievous crime that should have had the police all over it and addressing the matter but the neither the police nor the newspapers appeared to be moved to cover the issue.

Today however, one newspaper picked up the story which was full of uncorroborated sources, anonymous comments and disinterested parties along with an indolent comatose police force in bureaucratic inertia. [The news piece.]

Circumstance to tragedy

The substance of the news story is that a somewhat lovely marriage had run into serious difficulty with the husband having lost his job and his wife now the sole breadwinner, it had developed the staple of generally accepted domestic violence which culminated in the man stabbing his wife to death on his 30^th birthday and turning fugitive since then.

This subject is still very raw and emotive but it needs to be addressed in some ways that begins to question our so-called sentimental and traditional values about marriage, roles and perceptions about decisions that society still moralises on but never appears to help ameliorate.

Reading through the news story, one can understand that difficulty of a man in the Nigerian setting being unable to provide for his family, but it is not the end of the world, however, because the notion of love is predicated in the concept of material provision the inability to provide is psychologically presumed to be the emasculation of the man.

The impunity of domestic violence

The tendency which seemed to read like the usual Nigerian template was for the man to try to assert a form of authority within the household to ensure that the wife does not in his thinking get big beyond her boots, despite her selfless, longsuffering and patient work of trying to keep the family unit going as smooth as possible.

The man resorted to serious domestic violence as the news story avers that neighbours have before heard screams as a result of their altercation. Sadly, domestic violence is condoned, accepted, tolerated and allowed to flourish with impunity; there are very few cases where such acts of actual or grievous bodily harm to the spouse get to the point where it is criminalised.

This situation is unacceptable, it is unconscionable and deplorable, when a relationship gets physical it is probably irretrievable regardless of the hopes and aspirations for that relationship, if the so-called love is expressed in terror and violence it has become torment and regardless of the good intentions of counsellors, religious adherence or traditional constraints; it is time for the vulnerable to extricate themselves from a developing disaster that could as this case shows, end up in murder.

A developing crisis

A spouse does not just murder their partner on the spur of the moment, it most definitely started from some very basic disagreement that escalated into intemperate verbal abuse and on to the first hit that lead to the beatings, the brutalisation of the partner and it was just a matter of time before it resulted the murder.

It then begs the question if we have so condoned the domestic violence with placation and entreaty, persuasion and useless scriptural coercion why we should now be shocked with the husband’s murder of his wife.

It is an unforgiveable excuse to suggest that we never expected it to get that bad; the news story suggests the lady was reaching out and even if not as explicit, she was crying out for help but constrained by atrocious traditional values that condemn people to loveless, violent marriages for the sake of the children.

The sake of the children

We forget that the children are individuals; they probably would prefer to live in peaceful environments of single-parenthood than in the turmoil and “stable” environment a marriage breaking down with all the physical violence and the absence of love they observe amongst their parents.

Children are not idiots and there is very little they can be shielded from, my memory of disputes between my parents is keen; the voices, the images, the terror, the fear and I know there are many who as children experienced so much in their homes and now try to blank out those memories knowing full well that if that cycle is repeating itself, they are kicking against the goads subjecting their children to the same torments they once suffered.

For the sake of the children, they deserve better, the sentiment should change from that which this unfortunate victim expressed; if the home has no love, the child whose views are never taken into loving consideration needs to be where love is assured even if the parents have to part ways – no marriage is made in heaven, it has to work on earth and if it is not working, it really is NOT working.

Break up and move on

If all and any of the traditional or professional methods of conflict resolution fail to make the home a refuge of love, safety and peace for all concerned, the pragmatic solution is for the people to go their separate ways and find ways of rebuilding their shattered lives than remain in such a setting that creates this tragedy of finality.

That is not to say that certain disputes have not found reconciliation but at what cost, over how much time and for to what end?

Just as the Levitical sacrifices of old have become irrelevant, we cannot continue to sacrifice ourselves on the altars of tradition, custom, creed, law, norms, diktat or marriage – all these structures were made for man and not the other way round – as the Great Teacher did say, for all the significance the religious people placed on the Sabbath; Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath – it applies to a lot of unnecessary situations we allow ourselves to be subject to.

The aftermath is saddening

The need for justice crying from the highest towers must not be stifled, the apparently supine and indolent police need to be on this case questioning all the interested and acquainted parties to this sad situation and one can only wonder how much worse it would be for the toddler who would eventually learn that her father killed her mother in a domestic dispute just because the sentiments of tradition dictated that a child should be brought up in a place where the father and mother live together even though their cohabitation was at best untenable.

We need to speak up about domestic violence the moment it starts and condemn it before it gets extreme, stem it before it escalates and really, if they cannot live together without beating themselves up we should not be clueless and dumb; the love has long departed and whatever they have is being held together by the bizarre marriage of sadism and masochism, if there were a better way of describing the matter.

Say you’re one of them is a collection of short stories written by Father Uwem Akpan It won this year’s commonwealth writer’s prize. When I first saw the title, I thought it had got to be about child witches, particularly as Father Akpan is from Akwa Ibom state. It is not, it is about child abuse in different forms and in different parts of the continent. But I haven’t stopped thinking about the title, and in my head insisting that the book should have been about child witches, it is a perfect title, a perfect description of these horrendous act committed on children.

Say you’re one of them, this is what the pastors ask the children to say, they are forced to admit that they are witches or face dire consequences. And so children that they are, trusting that adults can only mean well, admit that they are witches so that they may be freed, but instead they are thrown into the lake of fire.

I first read about the Akwa Ibom child witches on Jeremy’s blog. I thought it was the usual western propaganda so I dismissed it. Then I read it on Headandaround’s blog and I know her to be very thorough so I thought there had to be some truth there. And there was.
Some children in Akwa Ibom, mostly Eket and Oron have been labelled witches by some men parading as pastors. These pastors often require a certain amount of money to deliver these children. The amount can range from NGN50,000 to NGN250,000. In a predominantly civil service state, this money is hard to come by forcing parents to abandon their children in fear of the havoc an undelivered child may cause in the home. The abandoned ones may actually be the more lucky ones as the ones who can afford to be delivered are taken through an atrocious routine of beatings, starvation etc. The parents pay money to get their children flogged.

On the part of the pastors it is sheer greed mixed with a criminal mind. It is business, pure and simple. A means to make money. Deliver your children and you will be free. All your problems will end. On the part of the parents, it is ignorance, foolishness, poverty. There is a high level of illiteracy and poverty in Akwa Ibom state, the people are desperate for something, anything and so these men have provided them with the solution. We have always believed in witches in Akwa Ibom state, probably more than any other part of Nigeria, if you have an accident, it’s witchcraft, even if the driver was drunk, and if you die during childbirth, it’s witchcraft too, never mind that there was no mediacal aid available. And so it’s easy for the ‘pastors’ to take advantage of an already polluted mind.

Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t generated as much coverage on blogville as one would have thought. Initially several bloggers covered it but it has died down. Perhaps people are too shocked to speak. But Jeremy has been consistent. I am not a big fan of his but on this one, I doff my hat for him. He has followed the progress of Stepping Stones Nigeria and CRARN(the NGO’s working for the children) closely. Recently there have been several attacks on them but thankfully the government intervened.

It may take a long time, but the child witches will eventually become child leaders through everyone’s collective effort. The ‘pastors’ will be brought to book but more importantly, my people need an education as only knowledge can truly set us free.