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Rape Recycles as New Pandemic, By Rose Moses

One worldwide scourge that gave the dreaded COVID-19 a run for notoriety during the global lockdown, you might say, was the rapist. Right now and everywhere one turns to, the hideous violator of the woman’s pride is being discussed.

This goes a long way to show that the girl child is indeed an endangered species in today’s world.

It’s not like the crime (of rape) is as novel as the Coronavirus that has almost put life on hold, globally. After all, rape has always been with us since ages past.

But the rate at which the heinous act is being perpetrated, and considering that even infants have become victims, is indeed heart wrenching.

Or how does one begin to imagine that a grown man with blood flowing in his veins would think of raping a three-month-old?

Worse is that such heinous crimes happen and the sooner we turn the blind eye and move on with little or no action taken against perpetrators.

That is why I believe that a bill at the National Assembly proposing castration for convicted rapists might just be the solution. More so when you consider that perpetrators of this crime are old enough to be grandfathers to their victims makes it even more painful.

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Alas, that bill was more or less thrown out of the Parliament that has perpetually been serving itself instead of the people.

And because perpetrators almost always go scotfree, incidents of rape now tend to be on the increase, assuming even more dangerous proportions.

Just recently, a three-month-old was reportedly receiving surgical treatment at the Jos University Teaching Hospital after she was allegedly raped by a 27-year-old man in Adogi village of Lafia Local Government Area in Nasarawa State. So unthinkable!

Mother of the baby, Maimuna Adam, in a report, said the atrocious incident occurred at midnight of May 27, 2020, when her family members were fast asleep. She had left the door to their apartment open to allow fresh air to come in, only to suddenly wake up around 3a.m to find that her baby was missing, along with her phone.

Naturally, the distraught mother immediately raised an alarm, thus attracting the attention of neighbors and community members, who began to search for the baby that was later found inside an uncompleted building, naked and bleeding.

She was found lying in the building without her pants on. Everywhere across her private parts was bloody, indicating violent violation of the infant.

Although the maniac, so to speak, because it takes a very mentally sick person to carry out such evil, is said to have been arrested, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, by the operatives of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, it remains to be seen how far the matter would be treated.

This one is equally so brazen and repulsive, too! Twenty 22-year-old Uwaila Vera Omozuwa, who found peace studying inside a church in Benin City, Edo State, where she was said to be a chorister since schools all over the country are closed following the COVID-19 pandemic, was brutally murdered, right in that sacred place of worship! And this was after she had been raped. What a soulless act!

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In a similar but equally gruesome manner and almost at the same period too, another young girl Barakat Bello, an 18-year-old student, was reportedly raped and killed in Ibadan. And you wonder what exactly drives this level of depravity. I mean, how can anyone be this beastly and brutal? Where did our humanity go?

But if you think all these are unimaginable, just wait for this. It sounds highly insane and rightly too, but do you know that a father could rape his own daughter as a form of punishment for some kind of offense?

Somewhere in India, humanity cried out as a 45-year old father reportedly raped his daughter, with the help of his wife who watched the ordeal.

The gory incident reportedly happened in the Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, where the man ostensibly ‘taught his own daughter a lesson’ for having an unapproved relationship with a local youth.

Horrible and heartbreaking stories of such gender-based violence are told in virtually every part of the world. And the rate is said to have become more alarming, especially at this lockdown period.

India may seem so far away but right here under our noses, similar acts are perpetrated daily. For instance, no fewer than 80 rape cases were said to have been recorded in Anambra State alone during the COVID-19 lockdown between April and May.

This is an increase of 48 new cases within the period, considering that only 32 cases of rape were reported in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Children and Social Welfare before the lockdown, according to the Director of Child Welfare Services in the ministry, Mrs. Nkechi Anazodo.

Confirming this at a United Nations Children’s Fund supported launch of an integrated child protection community sensitisation campaign in the state, she also stressed that sexual violence had become the order of the day, especially during the lockdown.

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Most worrisome is that not only are some fathers raping their daughters more during the period, they, in most cases, threaten to kill those daughters if they ever report the incident.

Any wonder, therefore, why most of such incidents are hardly reported?

But sex should be consensual, and therefore beats the imagination that someone like D’banj, real name, Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo, one of Nigeria’s popular musicians, would also find himself caught in the web of this ugly trend.

The likes of D’banj, even though married, and going by the nature of our society, would likely not have any problem having many girls he would like to have sex with consensually. So why is his name and indeed person right now tied to a rape story?

D’banj, also known as the Koko Master, is accused by one Seyitan Babatayo of illegally gaining access to her hotel room in December 2018 at past midnight while she was asleep and violated and raped her.

Curiously, Babatayo, who had cause to report the matter to the police this June, turned out to be the hunted. Rather than investigate her claim, the police, probably doing the bidding of the Koko Master, went ahead to arrest the complainant.

Babatayo said four armed policemen, on June 16, 2020, stormed her apartment and without any warrant, arrested her.

“They seized my phones, other personal effects and detained me in the police cell overnight at IGP-IRT office at Harold Shodipo, Ikeja,” she said.

Babatayo claimed to have called out D’banj on his hypocrisy, following an online post he made saying something like ‘no to rape, by giving a detailed account of how he raped her in 2018.

Although this case is ongoing and activists across the country are pressing on the police to ensure that justice is done, the rising wave of rape cases in our country deserves stricter legislation to curb the very dehumanizing and deadly act.

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