WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-08-02 Time: 22:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Kemi Yesufu
Abuja – Stories of adults having carnal knowledge of children abound and can be heart-rending. Incidentally, cases of pedophilia are on the increase in the country and globally. A pedophile is an adult who prefers children as sex partners. Even religious organisations are greatly affected by the rising tide of child molestation. The Catholic Church is not spared the ugly trend as it has battled to clear its reputation over allegations of decades of child abuse perpetrated by its priests. Statistics shows that 24 countries have reported cases of child abuse in the church, representing five percent of its priest accused of pedophilia. The Vatican has also paid an estimated $4billion as damages for child abuse cases.
Many agree that it is not out of hand to note that in the last decade there was hardly a month that went by without the media reporting cases of child rape and molestation. A growing trend shows that the girl child is mostly affected as men old enough to be their fathers (and in a reported case in a Lagos, a biological father) rape them inflicting physical and emotional scars. Many victims of child rape are molested by trusted family members or friends. Most victims are lured by male acquaintances that send them on errands and on their return pounce on the unsuspecting girls. This is in addition to a growing number of girls in the rural areas who dropped out of school to avoid being raped on their way to school via lonely footpaths.
This deprives girls of education and frustrates the efforts made by government to improve already low literacy rates among women.
With the state of affairs, it looks as if at every turn there is a child molester lurking around assiduously looking for his her next prey. A recent visit to the Nassarawa State Upper Area Court gave vent to this assertion. The incidence of July 23, 2010, at the Court located in
Mararaba, twenty minutes drive from the Federal Capital Territory (F.C.T, showed that the Nigerian child desperately needs protection from depraved adults.
This reporter had gone to cover a peaceful protest staged by concerned female journalists over the case of a four-year-old girl raped by one Paul Iliya aged 37. Iliya’s victim is one of his pupils in Nanchin Primary School, New Nyanya. Curiously, the school was established by the accused child molester. What stirred up the emotions of the journalists who were joined by women rights activists was that the little girl raped by Iliya tested positive to syphilis and gonorrhea after she was taken for medical examination in a private hospital in Mararaba. Just as the journalists rejoiced over the Magistrate’s refusal to grant Iliya bail, their morale was broken by the next case called up by Court officials.
It was that of serial child molestation. One Ifeanyi Aguagulam, a 37-year-old businessman was arraigned for defiling three girls, two aged nine and the third, a 12-year-old. All three mothers of the victims discovered that they innocently played into the hands of an enemy. Gloria Maji, who lives in Angwa Makama, Masaka, where Asuagulam molested all three of his victims, told Daily Independent her story. “On Sunday the June 13, I was at home with members of my family. At about 3p.m. a neighbour knocked on my door shouting that I should come and listen to what happened to my daughter.
I found my daughter crying. When I asked why she was crying, she told me that Ifeanyi (Aguagulam) was the cause of the trouble. The woman who came to plait my 12-year-old daughter’s hair then told me that she noticed that once my daughter went to ease herself in the toilet Ifeanyi trailed her with a bucket of water as if he was going to take his bath. She said she heard her scream for some time. She also noticed that it took her longer time to get out of the toilet and when she came out she wore a gloomy countenance.”
Continuing, the highly emotional mother said, “Ifeanyi had been telling my daughter that if she told anyone how he had been molesting her she would die. He forced his private part into her mouth threatening to kill her if she told somebody after which he used his hands to cover her mouth and raped her. But thank God the woman plaiting my daughter’s hair noticed what happened. She promptly asked my daughter what took place in the toilet. Out of fear, she denied anything happening. But the hair braider hit her hard and my daughter confessed. I myself might not have believed but when I saw some watery substance, which I suspected to be semen on my daughter’s thigh, I knew that all what I was hearing was true.”
Maji and the two other mothers described Aguagulam as a wolf dressed in sheepskin pretending to be a good neighbour.
“You know our people say that children belong to the community. So whenever Ifeanyi came to us that he wanted to send our children on errand we obliged him. It was not that he gave us money or anything. It was just his manner of approach. When my daughter disclosed how it all started, this made my neighbours curious because my daughter further confessed that Ifeanyi started raping her one-day after she returned from buying him bread. They asked their nine-year-old daughters one after another and they confessed that Ifeanyi had been raping them.” Maji who said that all she wanted from government was justice for her daughter and the two other girls, warned mothers to be wary of unscrupulous neighbours. She also narrated her ordeal in the hands of the police at the Masaka Police Station were the case was reported. “All I want from government is justice. How can a human being be so wicked to people that trusted him? I cried when the DPO in Masaka Police Station abused us that we were careless mothers and we should be blamed for what happened. But this Ifeanyi was my very good neighbour. I had never had problems with him. How would I have known that he was sexually abusing my daughter?”
This reporter left the Court premises after waiting for hours to speak with Iliya and Aguagulam both remanded in police custody by the judge who rejected their respective applications for bail. Both refused to step out of the Court building probably for fear of being questioned by a hoard of journalists or harassed by dozens of onlookers attracted by the protesters.
Besides girls who get raped, there are others whose lot is early or forced marriage at the instance of their parents. Experts link the trend to the rising cases of Virginal Vesco Fistula (VVF) currently ravaging some parts of the country due to the growing presence of underage mothers. Recently former Zamfara State governor, Senator Sani Yarima faced nationwide criticism for allegedly wedding an Egyptian minor. The girl, according to the National Human Rights Commission, is the daughter of Yarima’s Egyptian driver. Senator
Yerima, married the Egyptian girl at the National Mosque, Abuja, after allegedly paying certain mind-boggling bride price.
The marriage stirred some controversy in the land, leading to the senator being taken up by human rights and gender-based organisations. Yerima was, for instance, invited by the National Agency for the
Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) and was questioned for a little over an hour by investigators of the agency, after which he was released on bail, based on self-recognition.
But NAPTIP, it was however learnt, has since cleared the lawmaker of any wrong doing to the chagrining of many in the human rights community. The general public still awaits the outcome of the investigations of the Senate into the matter.
NAPTIP as well as Human Rights Commission said they were empowered by the Child Right Act (CRA), which came into law in 2003, by the Nigerian government. Section 21 of the Act forbids the marriage or betrothal of a person under the age of 18 and imposes a punishment of N500,000 or a five year jail term. The Egyptian law also limits the minimum age of marriage at 18. However the senator still stands his grounds that he has not contravened the laws of the land, arguing that the Nigerian constitution gives him the right to practice his religion (Islam) and that his religion allows him to marry any female of his choice.
The senator’s arguments incidentally find bearing with those who opine that the CRA may lead to loss of cultural values.
But Geoffrey Njoku UNICEF’s Communications Specialists disagrees. Njoku who spoke during a recent workshop organised by the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information and Communications and UNICEF to sensitise journalists on the importance of the CRA, observed that with proper sensitisation concerned persons will understand that the law was not designed to destroy the nations’ culture. He said, “I think with advocacy and public enlightenment the fears raised about the law spoiling our culture will be erased. At some point in this country, the killing of twins was part of our culture. If you kill a twin now, you will be sent to jail. So we have to look at culture from the perspective that it should not be at variance with the universal law of humanity. We in UNICEF are not interested in promoting issues that work against our culture, but you must ask yourself “Is it against our culture for our child to be immunised? Is it against our culture for a child to go to school?” The Child Right Act is a basket of clauses that ensure that a child survives, educated and protected. These cardinal issues are not against any culture.”
Njoku, equally argued against the use of poverty as an excuse to subject children to abuse. “The mother who sends out her child to hawk should do same because it is her duty to cater for the child not the other way round. There is no doubt that poverty is an underlining factor in our society. Sincerely, poverty has always been with us but you never heard anything like human trafficking. These days you hear people argue that that they allow their children to be trafficked because they are poor. We need to put all these issues in perspective. We have to ask ourselves about the choices we make. The parents who say they are poor and send their children out to hawk may just be making the wrong choices.”
In the same vein Taiwo Akinlami, a lawyer and avid promoter of children’s rights called on Nigerians to make out time to study the CRA. Akinlami, one of the resource persons at the UNICEF/CRIB workshop held in Calabar said the CRA is all encompassing law that is enacted to ensure child development, child survival, child protection as well as encouraging child participation. Akinlami, principal partner at Gilgal chamber pleaded for children’s rights to be recognised, respected an legalised in all states of the country, stressing that the Child Rights Act will help greatly in protecting children from all forms of exploitation.
So far 24 states have passed the CRA with only Abia and Lagos establishing Family Court where cases like that of the victims of child abuse in the same category to those earlier mentioned will enjoy accelerated hearing. Perhaps this young lawyer’s words encapsulate all that the 678 pages the Child Rights Act seeks to institutionalise when he said, “Children are the leaders of tomorrow and such issues pertaining to them must be treated with high level of importance. The CRA is about survival rights, development rights, protection rights and participation rights of children. A child is vulnerable today because of the failure of an adult. No child is vulnerable by nature.”
Original date published: 28 July 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201007290231.html?viewall=1