It’s our Senate, not a Sharia court

LATE last week, a premonitory event, which could most likely precede the eruption of fiery molten magma from Nigeria’s crust, played out and its epicenter was infuriatingly the floor of the Nigerian senate.

My initial prerogative at the looming hullabaloo was to sit quietly on the bleachers and contribute nothing but my undiluted spectatorship. However, I woke up to the harsh reality that woe betides not just Veracity, but posterity if I act like ‘Dumbo,’ the circus elephant, refusing to lend my unique ‘flying’ weapon to my fellow mortals with the XX chromosome when they are being confronted with an annihilation of their essence because I cowered at being tagged a ‘feminist.’ While in reality, I have been labelled as the same, long before now by chauvinistic male homosapiens.

So, I might as well throw the rabid myopic dogs a huge bone! Exactly a week ago, on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, the 8th National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, inaugurated on June 9, 2015 and led by Senate President, Bukola Saraki, squashed a bill cited as the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill, during its plenary session, AGAIN! Horrifyingly, the bill didn’t even pass the second reading before it was axed down in the face of smoldering nays and alas, history repeated itself about half a dozen years after a similar bill was presented at the sixth and seventh Senate by Chris Anyanwu, a former Senator from Imo East.

Well, it wasn’t surprising that the bill was rejected AGAIN, only unnerving, outraging and disgusting. Do we need a sangoma to proclaim that Nigeria needs a legal structure that would protect and preserve the wives, mothers and daughters of this nation before we sweep into action? Do we rather fold our arms and watch, with flatulent criticism or abhorrent indifference, the heart wrenching desolation of several innocent girls like the Ese Orurus of this nation, the barbarity with which widows are treated because of some demonic obsolete tradition, the fast shrinking population of women in politics, the devastating upsurge in rape, violation, violence, sexual harassment and a myriad of other dehumanising treatments the Nigerian woman suffers than give breath to a solid legal substratum that would, if not obliterate these perplexing realities, at least mitigate them? Being a mortal with the XX chromosome in Nigeria is fast becoming a similitude of the life of a school of herrings, a forage fish that feeds near the base of the aquatic food chain and are preyed upon by almost everything else in the marine wild.

I stand to reiterate that all carriers of the XY must take note that if you think it is a walk in the park to be female in Nigeria, then you must have had a concussion that wiped off a huge part of your mental storage system. This is a country where there is a notorious prominence of child brides. According to UNICEF, 43 per cent of girls are married off before they turn 18. In this country, nearly three in 10 women have experienced physical violence since age 15 while 7 per cent have experienced sexual violence. One in every four married women have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence.

Women are constantly being sexually harassed in schools, work places are constantly marginalised in not only politics, but other corporate establishments. How will a Gender and Equality Opportunities Bill pass in a male dominated Senate where casual misogyny is almost norm? Of Nigeria’s 109 senators, only eight are female, carriers of the XX chromosome! Ironically, that statistic got me guffawing in the face of such an enormous national issue, but salient points must be made. In the middle of 2015, females in Nigeria took to twitter and with the hastag #beingfemaleinNigeria shared the hardships that encumbered the Nigerian woman.

I would do us all a favour by not revisiting the paralysing experiences of females in Nigeria that were shared on twitter, but they cannot be over- emphasised. Hitherto, is it a criminal offence for the Nigerian female to seek a little window to climb through in the face of all these oppositions? Senator Biodun Olujimi of PDP, Ekiti South, should be lauded for presenting the Bill for consideration and not vilified by some stereotypic Northern male senators who spat fire and brimstone, leading the onslaught against the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill with the porous excuse that the proposed law was in breach of the Nigerian Constitution and in conflict with the Sharia Law. When did the Nigerian Senate become a Sharia court? How does an innocuous struggle for some self respect and dignity breach the Nigerian constitution? I could care less about those Northern naysayers because they stink of desperate self preservation.

It is stale news that the chief naysayer’s harem features at least one minor! However, our Senate is not and must never be converted into a Sharia court. All the Nigerian female is simply requesting for is a legal pedestal that would serve as an aegis in the face of opposition and provide some traction for the proper legal action against perpetrators. Is that too much to ask? Though the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, in his reaction to the rejection of the Bill, has said “unfortunately, the bill suffered a slight set back because there were some parts of the bill that some senators disagreed with along the lines of religion and tradition. I have it on good authority that Senator Biodun Olujimi, who introduced this Bill, will reintroduce it after re-drafting it to address some of the reservations that were expressed on the floor of the Senate,” I wonder what re-drafting he is talking about because tampering with the contents of the Bill or a compromise of any sort is the beginning of a lost course. The Bill is apt as it is and everything interred therein addresses the vindication of the Nigerian female.

While we wait for events to unfold, I see Nigeria tottering at the brink of a mutiny that brings to mind the first comedy by my kinsman, renowned poet and playwright, J.P. Clark’s The Wives’ Revolt, but I can assure you this one thing; the Nigeria Female’s mutiny would be nothing like hilarious! The Nigerian female will say NO in this patriarchal nation regardless of whose ox is gored. In J.P. Clark’s Erhuwaren, men shared the money paid to them by the company that drills oil from their community into three parts – one for the elders, one for the men and the last for the women. The problem was that the ‘elders’ were also all men. So, the women said “no!” To make it fair, they demanded the money be split into two – a simple division between the sexes. But the men also said “no!” and a cycle of ‘do me, I do you’ ensued. I hope that doesn’t become the case in Nigeria, but after three rejections, even the most demure female could become an unbridled shrew!