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| Ese Oruru |
THREE different incidents in the last week cast, poignantly, in bold relief the plight of the girl-child in Nigeria. Thanks to The Punch newspaper which launched the #FreeEse, #JusticeforEse campaign and the civil society groups that took up the fight in a spirited manner. With the outrage and outcry that followed, within 72 hours, this same 14-year old girl who was abducted from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State and taken to Kano, seven months ago, by one Yinusa Dahiru alias Yellow, is now free. While we were still grappling with this bizarre story, on Monday, a group of criminals stormed a school, Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary in Ikorodu, Lagos State and abducted three girls.
And if that was not shocking enough, on Wednesday, there was this other report about a 15-year old Benue girl, Patience Paul, who had been abducted by two neighbours and married off to a certain "Sarkin Musulmi" in Sokoto State. Her brother cried out, obviously motivated to do so by the Ese Oruru story. Set against the background of the abduction of 219 Chibok girls in 2014, a story that is well known internationally, Nigeria must by now appear in the eyes of the world as a large den of sexual predators, who seem to be obsessed with young, under-aged girls, and the adolescent female.
The international community would be correct to conclude that something terrible is happening here. Indeed, can we blame any analyst who may soon conclude that a girl child is abducted, assaulted or violated per minute in Nigeria, and that Nigeria is not a safe place for either a girl child or a female? The sanity and moral temperature of a society should be measured by the manner in which that society treats its underprivileged and vulnerable members. The powerful trample upon the weak, the privileged despise the less fortunate; a long journey to Hobbes' apotheosis, which is in truth a comment on the state of our development as state, country, people and society.
