In Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria, 4-year-old Banke Olu (real name withheld) was raped by her auntie’s husband. The last child of her parents – both in their 60s – Banke, a minor had been ferried off to the relatives not long after she was born.
Her parents, broke, weak and left with no option in order to give their baby a better life, wanted not just a better living standard but a much younger caregiver to take care of their child.
Mrs Temitayo Isiaka, younger sister to Banke’s mum, along with her husband willingly agreed to care for Banke and they took her in but the stay was not pleasant to put it mildly.
“Banke’s vagina was damaged from daily rape by her uncle”, Isabella Osowobi, the Executive Director with the organisation, Stand To End Rape Initiative (STER), a group which advocates for rape survivors who cannot speak about their ordeal, said in a phone interview with this reporter.
Although the STER Initiative has over the years provided about 350 interventions to women, girls and children cutting across medical, legal, mental health and financial services in Nigeria, “Banke’s case was very disturbing, for this one, we wanted justice served, so we followed the process to the end”, Ms Osowobi said.
“We have worked in over 40 communities and reached about 300,000 people with our programs on sexual violence, we’ve also seen that there’s a rise in child sexual abuse cases across the country”. Ms Osowobi reiterates.
The not-for-profit organisation uses various social platforms to educate and engage Nigerians on sexual abuse and other crimes, and the platform has become an important channel for reporting and tracking cases of sexual abuse nationwide. “It was a Twitter user who saw the man raping her (Banke) that got us informed,” Osowobi remarked. “He got images and sent to us and we followed up and the man was arrested”.
Poverty, social inequality, a failed educational system and family problems are but a number of reasons most children become vulnerable to various forms of sexual abuse in Nigeria.
In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act to domesticate the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although this law was passed by the federal National Assembly, it is only effective if state Houses of Assembly also enact it. To date, only 24 of Nigeria’s 36 States have passed the Act.
Banke’s abuser and his wife physically, psychologically and sexually harmed Banke. To protect Banke’s real identity, the name of her abuser was also withheld but while STER got a 14-year prison conviction and the convict is currently serving time at the Ogun State Prison – it took a year for STER to secure the conviction, a minor miracle considering that it takes much longer for criminal cases to work through Nigeria’s convoluted legal system.
The youngster has been moved to a shelter where she is undergoing psychotherapy and psychological counselling but while she may count herself lucky, she is far from the only child abused in the country; Nigeria has been unable to deal with the protection and rights of children. In Kano, Nigeria, a businessman was arrested for allegedly raping a six-month-old baby with the support of his wife.
Osowobi’s organisation is also trying to get justice for 14-year-old Obiamaka Orakwue who was raped to death in the Abule Ado neighbourhood of Lagos by hoodlums.
The victim was left lifeless after her assailants jumped over her fence, gained access to her bedroom and raped her to death. No arrests have been made as at press time.
A petition addressed to the Lagos state Commissioner of Police following Obiamaka’s demise has not led to much as the perpetrators still walk free.
Between January and September 2017, a total of 852 cases of domestic violence and related cases were recorded in Lagos, the state’s Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) says.
Lagos Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Adeniji Kazeem, said out of that number, there were 564 domestic violence cases, 60 ‘defilement’ cases, 30 rape cases, 11 attempted rapes, 123 child neglect and abuse cases, and 84 other cases.
Experts say most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30 percent are relatives of the child, often their brothers, fathers, uncles, or cousins; while about 60 percent are other acquaintances, such as “friends” of the family, babysitters, or neighbours; strangers are offenders in only about 10 percent of child sexual abuse cases.
The founding president of the Jose Foundation, also a nongovernmental organisation, Martins Abhulimhen says one in four girls and one in ten boys experience some form of sexual violence – with less than 5 percent of children who experience sexual violence receive support.
While Banke’s family along with STER try to heal her and ensure the psychological trauma of what she has gone through is adequately dealt with, for the Orakwues, the struggle to find closure over what had happened to their daughter lingers; with the perpetrators still on the run, little is left for the grieving family to hold on to.
Mercy Abang is a Freelance Journalist, focusing her work on development Journalism, under-reported or never reported stories mostly ignored by mainstream media organisations – She doubles as an International media fixer– She tweets at @abangmercy. Mercy is the 2017 United Nations Journalism Fellow and budgIT Media fellow for 2017. This article was written as part of the 2017 BudgIT Media Fellowship – BudgIT had no editorial influence or control over the story.
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