EDITORIAL: DEFILEMENT OF MINORS

Hardly a day passes now in Nigeria without one or two stories in the media about defilement of minors by strangers and even by their biological fathers or close relations.

Prior to contemporary times, cases of rape or sexual abuse were prevalent but not too common as  we now have with cases involving defilement of minors. Recorded cases of defilement of minors in the past ten years have quadrupled more the total number of cases recorded in past decades since Independence. In Lagos State alone official record released few months ago revealed that about 10,000 cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse were reported between 2019 and 2021.

Various cultures in Nigeria abhor sexual relationship with minors or underaged even though some religion allows teenagers to be given out in marriage, but not even the same religion would endorse the sexual abuse of same teenagers outside of marriage.

The different cultures in Nigeria largely consider it a taboo for a man to have sexual relationship with his female child much more a minor legally so defined.  

What is happening in current day Nigeria where stories of fathers defiling their female children for whatever reason, remains abominable and condemnable before God and man.

It has become extremely worrisome that the sanctity of sex is no longer tenable. Sex as a relationship between man and woman naturally has its defined boundaries which from time immemorial had been respected with sanctions adequately applied in cases of breach.

It was rarely heard of, that a man takes his own daughter of whatever age to bed. Incest was not part of culture, paedophile was not part of it either, but today, sex related stories involving females and their fathers contend for space in the media. Same with the regime of paedophile.

Some states like Lagos in an attempt to criminalise such act, have come up with certain legislative measures to protect the girl child from being abused sexually, yet the existence of such law has not deterred offenders in any way!

Neither have socio-psycologists been able to actually define what is responsible for such anti cultural  tendencies and possible ways of curbing same.

Though the extant law on rape may be considered good enough to take care of other forms of sex abuse, yet the bottle neck in the criminal justice administration may have largely contributed in the slow dispensation of Justice in cases relating to defilement of minors and such like.

Matters are not helped by the complicated cases of fathers being the accused in cases involvibg them defiling their infant daughters. In such situations, getting a willing witness to testify has not been easy for the prosecution to win his cases.

SECURITY REPORTERS.com is of the view that a paradigm shift has become highly necessary with a view to finding an alternative way of prosecuting the accused within a record time.  Stiffer penalty should be applied more than what the law currently says to ensure sanity.