People buy fine dog breeds to protect their families and other important things. Yet, if the dogs are not well-trained and directed towards their primary goal of protection, they become in-house threats. Men are endowed with physical energies to protect and provide for their families and society. When they are not enabled to use these energies for protection and provision, they become threats to those they should protect. The rising occasions of rape in Nigeria points to a mismanagement of the physical, emotional and intellectual energies in Nigeria.
Several reports indicate the high level of sexual harassments and rape in Nigeria.[1] These events occur in both poor and rich families, cities, offices, churches, schools and streets. Some security personnel are reported to sexually exploit victims of natural disasters and terrorism that they should protect in IDP camps.[2][3] Some rape cases happen without physical force, but with inducements and veiled threats like sack, query and withholding salaries. Many of these are unreported because the victims are afraid of stigma and attacks or are poor, traumatized and disbelieved. The few that get reported to the authorities are either not pursued by the police or the victim is advised to keep silent lest she disgraces her family.[4]
What is rape? Rape is the unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.[5] And other forms of “sexual contact or behaviour that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient,” are called sexual assault.[6] Though anybody can be sexually assaulted, most reports focus on women and female children.
Social relationship between man and woman: Theists believe that after creation, God gave humans dominion over his creatures for their procreation, sustenance and fulfilment. This power to dominate these creatures manifest when humans develop their social and scientific intelligence for exploring and using natural elements. By mastering the environment, men reform the resources to satisfy their bodily needs. Thus, because of their physical strength, men are more disposed for social organization, production and security, while women use their products to support growth in the society. When men successfully organize their society for collaborative productivity and security, they become attractive to females who normally seek their protection and provision. So, the successful application of man’s intellectual procreation provides resources for satisfying and sustaining the sexual procreation.
Causes of rape in Nigeria
- Social structure for poverty: Colonialists created Nigeria by tying different several unconsented peoples under a militarized government[7] for exploitation.[8] At independence, colonialists replaced themselves with indigenous officials to continue exploiting people’s resources for the colonialists.[9] Since government seizes the people’s industrial resources[10][11][12] for foreigners, many Nigerian men remain unproductive and poor. And when they are unable to attract desirable female partners due to poverty, they resort to rape in Nigeria.
- Psychological need to prove dominance: man’s natural instinct for dominance or victory steadily seeks expression through mental and physical battles. Thus, bright societies create healthy means for people to productively express this dominance through sports, music, arts, debates and socio-industrial exhibitions. And if this instinct of dominance is not properly channelled to productivity, it resorts to vices like cultism and rape. So, some people rape women and children, not because they lack money, but to feel dominant or victorious over something.[13]
Nigeria’s imposed nationhood does not properly promote the means of productively expressing this instinct of dominance. Government’s seizure of resources for colonialists hinders Nigerians’ possibility of creating wealth from natural resources. Hence, progressive avenues for expressing healthy dominance like sports, arts, technology and academics lack stable support for growth. And the supply materials for these activities remains inconsistent due to the high cost of importation.
- Sexualisation of the society: man’s instinct for procreation can manifests in two ways: sexual and/or intellectual procreation. The elements that a society emphasizes pushes people to channel more energy to intellectual or sexual procreation. When a society channels more energy to intellectual procreation, the result is often an increase in productivity and wellbeing. But when the focus on intellectual procreation is not emphasized, the energy easily diverts to sexual procreation, resulting in an increased desire for sexual activities. And since sexual procreation does not require intellectual rigour, it becomes more appealing and affordable.
The high occurrence of sexual harassments and rape in Nigeria can be linked to the absence of intellectual productivity and social sexualisation. Many of the comedies, movies, music-videos, dance-steps, reality shows, modelling, internet and adverts contain suggestive sexual contents. Sahdguru of India noted that 70% of the internet traffic is directed to pornography.[14] This high dose of sexual-suggestive content eventually saturates the minds of both adults and minors. This leads to a continuous search for avenues to express the sexual fantasies even through rape.
- Child-marriage and poverty: due to delay in social enlightenment and productivity, some cultures still practice child-marriage and other forms of forced marriages. This child and forced marriages occur especially among the poor people. Even the girls who are not forced into early marriage are often abused in places where they work as nannies, house-maids, street hawkers or sales-girls.
Some of the effects of rape on the victims include:
- Hatred for the opposite sex and resort to lesbianism and homosexuality.
- Loss of value for love and life, which could lead to suicide or terrorism.
- Mental, social and physical instability of victims.[15]
Reorganizing the society for proper management against rape
Despite many efforts to condemn and combat rape in Nigeria, it continues raging even among social protectors. So, the people can develop new strategies to check the social enablers of rape. Since sexual urge rises in the insufficiency of avenues for intellectual productivity, the strategy will emphasize social reorganization for productivity. This new strategy will involve:
- Conducting a social research to discover and acknowledge the different Nigeria’s peoples, their beliefs about humans, respective lands and resources.[16]
- Organizing intercommunal conferences among sections and groups towards a national conference for Nigerians to agree on their mode of partnership. Thus, constitutional decisions and laws will reflect the people’s beliefs and agreement for a productive partnership.
- Inviting local and foreign-trained specialists to train Nigerians to process their local resources for more industrial production.
- Releasing people’s lands and resources for industry and eventual tax-payment to the central government. This will encourage government to protect the people’s productivity for better tax-returns, and encourage citizens to be more productive. Then these productive men will channel their energies to creativity, and thus attract and sustain desirable partners. Also, gainfully productive men can then provide for and protect their wives, daughters, sisters and female relatives from rape.
Managing the new society against rape
Despite creating jobs and means of intellectual productivity, some people may not easily give up the habit of rape. Hence, Nigeria will adopt other positive measures to curtail rape.
- Conscientize the society about the beauty and dignity of consented and well-timed sexual relationship using mass-media, movies, songs and interactive talk-shows. Though this method does not directly condemn rape, it extols consented and purposeful sexual relationship as a precious milestone of development.
- Rediscover, modernize and fund different indigenous games and sports as healthy means of expressing the natural instinct of domination. Also, properly organize and fund other sports like football, basketball, volley ball, tennis, boxing, arm-wrestling, wrestling, swimming and general athletics. Sustenance of this activities will demand more productivity from Nigerian producers for the nation’s economic sustenance.
- Fund competitions in academic works, technological exhibitions, productivity, arts, music, fashion and general creativity.
- Enable existing agencies to investigate rape-complaints and to provide counselling, protection and reintegration of the victims.
- Readjusting the laws on rape to include, apart from prison-term, paying heavily for social, physical and psychological damages to victims.
It is in man’s nature to conquer and dominate his environment either as an individual or as a group. Nature gave them rough and jagged energy to conquer elements in their environment for their good. When a society denies men access to natural resources to conquer productively, they tend to unleash their jagged energy on women and children.
[1] http://dailypost.ng/2018/03/05/four-men-rape-19-year-old-niger/
[2] Amnesty International, 24th May, 2018. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/05/nigeria-starving-women-raped-by-soldiers-and-militia-who-claim-to-be-rescuing-them/ retrieved 5th September, 2018.
[3] Dionne Searcey, “They Fled Boko Haram, Only to Be Raped by Nigeria’s Security Forces” in New York Times, 8th December, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/world/africa/boko-haram-nigeria-security-forces-rape.html
[4] The Guardian, “Nigeria has a rape culture too” in The Guardian 14th January, 2013 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/14/nigeria-rape-india-culture retrieved 16th October, 2018
[5] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape, dictionary.reference.com/browse/rape,
[6] Vanguard, “Rape: Nigerians speak on psychosocial implications, solutions” in Vanguard News, 28th June, 2018. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/06/rape-nigerians-speak-psychosocial-implications-solutions/
[7] S. O. Oyedele, “Federalism in Nigeria” In Issues in contemporary political economy of Nigeria. edited by Hassan A. Saliu. (Ilorin: T.A. Olayeri Publishers, 1999), p.57
[8] Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 2009 edition (Abuja: Panaf publishers, 2009), p.217
[9] Walter Rodney, op. cit. p.319
[10] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 2
[11] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 2, paragraph 1
[12] Nigerian minerals and mining act 2007 act no. 20, chapter 1, Part 1, Section 1, paragraph 3
[13] Nigel, Barber, “Is rape about control or sex?” in Psychology Today Apr 05, 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201104/is-rape-about-control-or-sex
[14] Sahdguru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc_Fey2UPwc
[15] Vanguard, “Rape: Nigerians speak on psychosocial implications, solutions” in Vanguard News, 28th June, 2018. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/06/rape-nigerians-speak-psychosocial-implications-solutions/
[16] Chukwunwike Enekwechi, “The social research for a new Nigeria” in Restartnaija June 5, 2018. https://restartnaija.com/2018/06/05/social-research-new-consented-nigeria/ retrieved