•Concerned Nigerians urge govt, stakeholders’ action to suppress the tide 

In recent times, there has been an alarming upsurge in the number of rape and other cases of sexual harassment. We have learnt that there was hardly a day that passes without a woman being raped.

For instance, Nigerians are yet to come to terms with what overcame Corporal Barau Garba, the police man who allegedly abducted and repeatedly raped a 14-year-old girl for six days and brutally ruptured the girl’s private part in the process.

According to reports, the minor from Asaba, Delta State, was said to have missed her way while in Onitsha, Anambra State, when she met the policeman whom she allegedly approached for help. She had believed that she was safe with him. But she was wrong.

Barau, who was believed to be serving at Mopol 7, Sokoto, in Sokoto State, was on a special assignment in Anambra State. But he deviated and found another assignment for himself, thereby dragging the name the force through the mud.

Rape, according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is a conscious process of intimidation, forcing somebody to have sex when they do not want to. The perpetrators usually keep women and children especially, in a state of constant fear.

Some of accounts of rape can be chilly while some can be disgusting. In the course of rape, some victims lose their lives; some are infected with chronic and incurable diseases.

Some men are mostly the predators; some simply launch out, recklessly hunting for hapless targets in order to satisfy their sexual desires.

Just recently, it emerged that a man in Enugu, Enugu State, raped his three children ages five, seven and nine.  And in Lagos, a 10-year-old girl had cried out, alleging that her father had defiled her for 18 straight months.

At Okuokoko, a town near Orerokpe in Okpe Local Government Area of Delta State, there was also the case of a man, Esiuwu, a suspected rapist, who set his victim’s house on fire after a failed attempt to rape her.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Zanna Ibrahim, said the suspect was arrested following a complaint by the victim’s elder sister, Joy Godwin.

The suspect allegedly scaled the fence to rape his victim.

“The complainant hit Esiuwu with a wood in the head but the suspect came back to set the house his victim lived in ablaze,” Ibrahim said.

Also very pathetic was the story four men, who allegedly raped an 11-year-old hawker in Ibadan, Oyo State a few months ago. The victim, a secondary school student, who lived in NNPC area of the city, was said to be hawking detergent when the suspects dragged her into an uncompleted building, where they allegedly raped her in turns.

The men had pretended that they wanted to buy the detergent from her; they urged her to come with them to the uncompleted building to collect her money. Two others were waiting there. They took advantage of the helpless girl.

The Oyo State Police Command’s Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Adekunle Ajisebutu, who confirmed the incident said: “The case was reported by the victim’s mother; so the state Commissioner of Police, Mr Samuel Adegbuyi, directed that the case should be transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department of the command.”  

A concerned mother, Mrs. Josephine Nkiruka Ebo, who is former President of Inner Wheel Club, Lagos, in an interview with Daily Sun, lamented that rape in the country had become endemic.

She blamed the ugly trend on the spate of moral decadence in the country.

Mrs Ebo blamed the erosion of family values and lack of parental care and control for the rising tendencies, and urged parents to rise and check the trend urgently. She equally identified the prevailing harsh economic realities as contributing to pushing men into taking irrational decisions.

He indentified other forces to include flagrant exhibition of indecency, porn videos on the internet and sensual and immoral songs.

She said that the terrible incidence of rape might continue to be on the increase unless the necessary things were done, adding that it was a fight every member of the family and the government must fight.

Ebo said rape was one big crime that ought to be adequately punished, insisting that a rapist was a criminal and should be treated as such.

In the same vein, the Director of Mirabel Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Ikeja, Lagos, Mrs Itoro Eze-Anaba, has disclosed that the centre received sexual assault victims from all ages, regretting that the number of minors now topped the list. She said some of the victims’ ordeals were pathetic, lamenting that most of the perpetrators were either family members or friends.

She was unhappy that Mirabel Centre was not tracking most of the cases in court due to financial constraints but said the centre never deviated in providing timely professional and victim-friendly services to victims of sexual assault, and that was always done in most confidentiality.

Eze-Anaba said: “We have been able to pinpoint that people under the age of 18 are the majority of the victims. Another revelation is that rape is not committed by strangers because over 80 per cent of the victims were raped by people they knew. That contradicts the myth that people are raped because of what they wear or the unusual places they visit.”

On why rape incident was steadily increasing, she decried the high level of impunity among the perpetrators. “Some of our clients revealed to us that the perpetrators boasted that justice would never catch up with them. So, people are getting away with this every day.”

She blamed the low level of prosecution of rapists in court on societal influences, stressing that in most cases, the family members of the victims always withdrew the case at the last minute.

According to her, in some of the cases, there would be pressure on the mother of the victims to withdraw the case, especially when their father was the perpetrator.

But a psychiatrist, Johnson Olumide, said people tended to exhibit irrational behaviour when triggered by other circumstances. He maintained that rape and other sexual assaults were not justifiable. He advised Nigerians to inculcate the habit of routine psychiatric checks.

“Every human has the symptom of mental disorder, but some are more pronounced than others. Mental disorder is not madness as many people usually misconstrue it to be,” he said.

He, however, called on families, institutions, civil society groups, government and the international community to speak with one voice against rape in order to achieve a violence-free society for all.

Source: Daily Sun

YOU must be prepared before going into Igwebuike forest in Awarra, Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State, one of the chief priests in the area, Mr. Okoro Ogbuji, told South-East Voice. Sometime ago, it was the story of a 63-year-old woman, one Mrs. Ogo Omeriji, said to have been kidnapped, murdered and buried in the said Igwebuike forest.

This was after the suspected kidnappers allegedly collected N500,000, as ransom. The ugly incident took place in December, 2015. About a year later, it was another tragic event,  in which one Stanley Eluwa Ihechika, aged 24, a motorcyclist, was lured into the Igwebuike forest by suspected cult members, killed and buried in a shallow grave. His remains were exhumed in October, 2017.

Kidnap syndicate

Omeriji died in the hands of those suspected to be her nephews, a three-man kidnap syndicate, while Eluwa was killed by a suspected five-man gang, in which an 18-year-old boy, Bobo John, had been arrested by the Imo Police Command who led the Police team to Igwebuike forest, where they exhumed the carcass. The forest is known by some villagers as a hideout for criminals, secret cult members and where unreported atrocities had been committed. A dangerous  forest, only the brave, they say, can attempt to cross but not without expecting possible attacks. For some people, at about 06:30pm, villagers who have one thing or the other to do within the Igwebuike forest, would have to suspend their engagements for a safer time, for security reasons.

One of their reasons was that at night, they usually hear sounds of gunshots coming from the Igwebuike forest. Most worrisome was that the agrarian settlement, perhaps has been turned into a war zone by rival cult groups; a situation, which may have discouraged farmers from producing foods. Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area is known for cultivation of cassava and production of garri. It is said to be at the top in garri production, among the 27 local government areas in Imo State. In fact, some describe Ohaji /Egbema as the food basket of Imo State. Another worrying dimension as explained by some of the villagers, was that the cult groups measure their strength by the number of their opponents killed and buried in the Igwebuike forest.

Many were of the opinion that some young people who had gone missing without trace, may have disappeared into the Igwebuike forest. The story pointed out that, members of these cult groups would escape whenever they sensed any threats to their lives. As a result of that, anyone left at home on the fateful day would bear the brunt. “These boys are sadists, their utmost joy is to see the heads of their fellow human beings severed and their skulls used for drinking, only they can tell what type of drink,”one of the villagers who did not want his name mentioned told South-East Voice. Mr. Ogbuji, the chief priest told South east Voice that because some elders in the community were against their activities, some of them were being haunted for saying the truth. He said, “I am from same family with Stanley Eluwa who was murdered.

I could remember that I had a problem with this secret cult members. It started when I paid them a visit and asked them questions on why they should kill their brothers and sisters in the name of cultism. “I asked them why they would pursue us out of the village, something which we did not do to our forefathers; something we did not do as young people? Do you know that after advising them to stop the killings, the different cult groups started planning to kill me.

They made several attempts but they did not succeed. “Let me tell you, they also killed a chief priest from Obitte, who was advising them to stop the killing of their own brothers. The name of the man killed is Sunny. Because of all these evil things happening, before you come to this area, you get prepared.” However, the story would not have been complete without the gallant efforts of the Imo Police Command led by the Commissioner, Mr. Chris Ezike. On his assumption of office, he promised to fight against cultism in the state through what he described as community policing. To achieve this, the commissioner declared war against activities of cultists in the state.

The commissioner said: “The peace and tranquility we have witnessed in the past two months can only be attributed to the high profile arrests and recoveries the command has made within the period under review. We will continue the all out offensive against criminals through intelligence-led raids, cordon and search, diligent investigation of arrested suspects and successful prosecution of cases. “We shall continue to be more visible at black spots, strategic junctions,  public places and commercial centers.

We shall also pay special attention to general and specific security of Imolites from the diaspora who have returned home to enjoy the yuletide. The banks/financial houses shall also be our top priority.”