“The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” That was the declaration in 1967 of the then Minister of Justice, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (later, Prime Minister) in arguing for the removal of anti-homosexuality laws from the Criminal Code of Canada. The world has gone far beyond that position now, with the legalisation of gay marriages in several countries, Ireland being the latest, somewhat surprising addition. This piece is not about homosexuality, however. While the state, indeed, may not make it its business to pry into what goes on between two consenting individuals in the privacy of their bedroom, it would be a totally different matter if one of those individuals happened to be a minor. In such a case, the state has the duty to protect that citizen who is a minor – and even Mr. Trudeau would be expected to be in full agreement.
Sexual crimes against minors have been on the increase all around the world, with children being trafficked and sold as sex slaves to pedophiles and terrorists, like ISIS and Boko Haram members. Ms. Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his Global Public Square programme on CNN on Sunday, 7th June, 2015, and she recounted tales of horror from her recent trip to Syria. Young girls are currently being auctioned as slaves, literally, by ISIS terrorists and turned into sex and baby-making machines, given that ISIS has the plan to create a new breed of human beings to populate their Islamic caliphate, and their desire is that these ones would not have the usual human values like compassion, consideration for others, sense of justice, etc. It is said that this objective is the reason they are so brutal in their warfare practices.
Now, in a most interesting turn of events, the Seventh Senate of Nigeria at its last sitting on Thursday, 4th June, 2015, is reported to have passed some 46 bills within the space of 10 minutes! The Senators were said to have evoked the principle of expediency to dispense with the normally required second and third readings of the bills. Among the bills so hurriedly passed were the Anti-Rape Bill, which has been lauded by many, and the Consensual Sex Bill, which saw the legal age of consent to sex reduced from 18 to 11 years. From now on, therefore, (if the bill is assented to by the President of the Federal Republic) a 65 year-old man would be permitted by law to take an 11 year-old girl into his bedroom and have sex with her, and it would be nobody’s business, since the assumption would be that the girl is a consensual partner in the act. An eleven year-old, a mere child just discovering the functioning of her body, is now deemed capable and fit, by Nigerian law, to take the decision of consenting to sex or not, the assumption being that she fully understands all that is involved in sex and knows what she is doing.
One would like to know who or which group of legislators sponsored this bill, and what the intention is for doing so. What arguments were advanced in support of the proposal? Yes indeed, there is a lot more “sex” in the open these days, and from movies as well as pornographic sites available on the internet, our children are getting exposed to sexual issues at a younger age than was the case for their parents’ generation. Do we because of this development therefore decide that the best thing to do for all those children who get drawn to pornographic sites out of curiosity is to legally empower them to fully satisfy that curiosity? Once your 11 year-old daughter says “Yes” to the tantalising offer by that “big uncle” who lures her into his bedroom with promises of the latest smart phone and a shopping spree in Dubai, you as a parent must accept that she knows exactly what she is doing; and you are powerless to do anything about it.
One would expect that President Buhari, before signing the bills that come before him into law, would normally seek to establish that they represent positions he would be ready to defend at all costs, and that they are just and fair to the people who would be affected by that particular law. In doing this, he would rely on the opinions of experts in the relevant areas. Given the hurried manner in which the passage of this particular set of bills was conducted, the President would need to be extra cautious in appending his signature to them. Care must be taken to review them and ensure that no ill-intentioned bill or one which would adversely affect the well-being of a subset of the population (and a most vulnerable one at that!) has been smuggled in under the cloak of expediency. That is an important service he must render to those who have elected him to be their leader.
The state, therefore, DOES have the duty to make it its business to know what is going on in the bedrooms of the nation if little girls are being taken into those bedrooms and subjected to the trauma of having “consensual” sex with men who are five or six times their age – and their size!
