THE MONSTER CALLED RAPE

            I guess that my difficulty in being able to write about women related themes in my writings stemmed from the fact that when I had grown to the level of self-realization, my mother who could properly guide me through the mountainous range of knowing and appreciating the opposite sex was no more of this earth, or perhaps because I didn't have any female siblings, or even maybe, because I grew up in a conventional Nigerian family , ferociously grounded in morals, where it would amount to a taboo for a man to ever think of stooping so low to the level of a woman( Infact, God help you if Papa should as much as catch you innocently daydreaming about the opposite sex).                                             I had methodically embarked on a joyous voyage of Thank-God-I-Am-A-Man themed writings. A moment of introspection had awakened in me and opened my eyes to the wonders and amazing world of being a woman. A task which I will not set out here, but suffice it to say that being a woman is a very beautiful experience. That sadly seems to be on a sharp decline as evinced from the various acts of violence against women. Questions after question continually barraged my mind. What if my future wife was someone who had undergone the damaging and traumatizing effects of being raped? What if I am nowhere to be found tomorrow, what will the fate of my future daughters in a world of prejudiced values against women? What if my only sister, had she been alive, grows to become a victim of rape? Worst of all, what if I had been born a girl, who could tell, if I wouldn't have experienced such traumatic moments of being dehumanized and downgraded? As these unanswered questions kept nagging at me, I found myself invariably departing from mainstream Collins; trademark Arikor, who naturally is stone-hearted when it comes to matters concerning the opposite sex. Because whichever way you decide to look at it, the issue of rape touches us all in one way or the other. And then an inner voice told me it was time to wear the shoes of rape victims so as to feel how it pinches; it was time to lend my voice to the dastardly act of rape; This monster called rape.
       A casual glance through daily newspapers will reveal the alarming rate at which rape is now jostling positions with the now 'perceived-normal' Boko-Haram endemic. For every page that reports about the inhuman activities of the evil Boko-Haram sect - which are very many - there is a corresponding page of a rape report somewhere from Abia to Sokoto; Lagos to Kaduna; Ebonyi to Rivers etc. The custom of blaming the act on the devil seems out of vogue now( I believe maybe the devil must have angrily cautioned any rapist to mention the devil at the rapists' own peril). The flimsy and unreasonable excuse now is that the sheer dressing of the victim and her flirtatious lifestyle called for her to be raped!. What sexual appeal, if any, premised on her dressing, a five-year old toddler has can best be answered by the rapists themselves.
            There is no gainsaying the fact that our society is a jaundiced and bigoted one, where the male folk reign supreme. And so we were born into such a defective system, and we find ourselves as men, being tutored to exalt ourselves above our female counterparts-even our elders, thus our lives are shaped by this societally-accepted ill. A judge of the Court of Appeal once captured it concretely when he held obiter, that our own society is of a patriarchal heritage, where everything ought to be done according to the wishes and whims of the man! What a myopic view? And so, the woman finds herself at odds with a father who desires to choose her husband for her, or his 'happy' thoughts whenever he recalls the handsome sum she would fetch as bride price, or even the so-called husband, to whom she is expected to submit however unreasonable his sexual urges are. If the husband ever forces her to have sex against her will, that is not rape! We now have many animals, to say the least, roaming in the body of humans, holding on to their bigoted and short-sighted views that every woman ought to be ravished and subdued. I know my future children - male or female - will not forgive me should they ever find out that I had the opportunity to speak against this evil and I never did.
             In short, the damaging ordeals which society imposes on women leaves much to be said. In a  rape trial not long ago , after the victim had painstakingly narrated the heart-wrenching pains she went through, the judge still dismissed her claim based on expert opinion given by male medical doctors, who opined that she could nonetheless consent to the sexual act even in a drunken state, and because a former girlfriend of the accused had testified that he was a 'gentleman' who would never force a lady to sleep with him against her will. In another scenario, a lady's claim of attempted rape was dismissed because the accused person had only removed his clothes after entering the room she was in and locked the door, when( thank goodness) he was interrupted by someone else. In the words of the judge,"...the actions of the accused cannot amount to attempted rape, for he was only in the process of having a connection with the lady and nothing more...!" Whatever the judge might have meant by 'connection', only him can sufficiently explain, whoever told him that the lady wanted to enjoy the unwarranted and unjustified naked sight of the accused man? In yet another disturbing scenario, a clear and established case was struck out because the accused led evidence, which was easily believed by the court, that prior to the rape, the victim had told him of her numerous earlier sexual escapades and one-night stands with different men. On the day of the rape, she had gone out with him and had started kissing him amorously at some point, which consequently led to his arousal... I guess the judge in this case had no difficulty forming the words: cheap slut! dirty whore!! common prostitute!!! You deserved what you got! There abound cases where women who might be shy or soft spoken are forced to graphically paint the lurid pictures of the ordeal they went through, much to the pleasure and joy of the audience. They will have to re-create the unsavoury scene, from grabbing her against her will, to pinning her down, to beating her up in order to subdue her, to the shredding of her clothing, to the dastardly act of invading the essence of her womanhood, only for such cases to be thrown out on basis of technicalities. All the mentioned instances, are, of course, obtained abroad. I don't have to describe what is seen here, for everybody knows of the absurdity of our legal system.
    We have a further situation where the male folk having adorned themselves with pornography, which basically reduces women to mere vaginas, breasts and buttocks, will set out to experiment what they've seen. And when the desirable becomes unavailable...we have cases of fathers raping daughters, brothers raping sisters, uncles raping nieces and so on. I don't have to tell of the numerous women whose lives have been threatened should they ever speak up against the ordeal they went through.
           The time, I believe, has come when the status quo ought to change. Guys, take my advice, which is a very good antidote. Whenever you see a semi-nude woman, or even a nude one as some of them prefer, just become momentarily blind. Again, this issue of the man having dominion in a marriage or relationship should stop. Granted that the Holy Scriptures designated that the man should be the head of the home, it never said to the point of annihilating the woman! For all I know, marriage is a contractual agreement between consenting adults of equal status. Where then lies the basis of positing that the women ought to submit to the sexual urges of the man, for he owns her, her body and even her soul? If the marriage was premised on a consensus ad idem from both parties, then the consummation of same  ought to involve a consensus from both parties.
Finally, as a word of quintessential wisdom to fellow men, there is a great difference between wishing pain and suffering on someone and actually inflicting such pain on that someone. The traumatized survivors of the various Boko-Haram engineered bombings will easily attest to the truism of the above statement. The pains they go through is not different from that of many a rape victim. Civilisation should be the key word here. And to be civilised, one doesn't have to see the four walls of a classroom. The psychological make-up of women does not allow for such ordeals we put them through, so we shouldn't ever delude ourselves into believing  that women actually enjoy being raped. Even a prostitute takes offence at being called a prostitute, how much more the innocent and decent woman on whom you  unleash your animalistic tendencies? Infact, to say that any man who rapes a woman is an animal would be insulting to animals. It is time to cage that monster between our legs. And if any man feels he is too prominent to obey this simple rule, well, as the Igbo adage goes:"When the hen digs an unfathomable hole, it should not run away from whatever comes out of the hole."



                                                                                                                      COLLINS ARIKOR




AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article owes its inspiration to:
Oghosa Annabel, Victoria Nkechi who unknown to them, readily provided their brains for me to pick, in order to fulfil my selfish ambition of relieving my competency in writing.
Nkechukwu Andrea, Kosisochukwu Goodness and Imosieme Khadeejah for leading me through the intricacies and delicateness associated with womanhood.
Ogochukwu Ethel-who assumed the role of a mother in my life and taught me what every true mother ought to teach her son(s) concerning the female gender.
I am proud to call all these great ladies my girlfriends for showing that being a lady is truly a beautiful experience.

THE MOST HANDSOME REWARD

      I grew up always believing that the many foodless days I and my siblings experienced, and our many holefull clothes had constituted poverty, but my opinion changed when I got to see poverty on a firsthand basis. On my arrival at Ajegunle; blessed A.J. City of Lagos. I empirically felt poverty in its strictest sense. There, rats, the size of small cats, were busy scavenging and darting to and fro the shacks made of rusted zinc and termites-infested boards which the inhabitants called home. Mosquitoes, as big as butterflies were siphoning what little blood they could suck from the glistening bodies of the brown-haired, kwashiorkor-imprinted and skeletal children playing. Among the sights that met the eye were naked children jumping in and out of pits, which I guessed had to be the latrines because of the pungent smell emanating from within. The women, tying their threadbare wrappers with exposed breasts sat huddled with that faraway looks which were not of this world, but of the world beyond and I heard that they were living in an urban area.

     My August discovery was made even more profound by what my companion had to say “ These people have scores of people collecting a constant supply of emoluments and other numerous benefits on their behalf at councillorship level, local government level, state level, Federal level and even International level! “ What crime had these people committed to be rewarded with such was still a mystery to me.

   My personal experiences had necessitated my desire to become a writer, not because my little arsenal of words should be used to impart a life in what little way I could, but because I strongly felt that my extraordinary childhood afforded me the right to create my own world of refuge; where I would always run to and hurl blame at other people. At least, I had a roof over my head (even though we usually collected a substantial amount of water through the ceiling whenever it rains, and God help us when it rained during the night, we would have to kiss sleep goodbye). Yet here were a group of imperturbable people living despite these inhumane conditions and they didn’t even have the slightest intimation that they had the right to better lives.

   2015 is around the corner, and as usual, posters and billboards will spring up at every road one bothers to look, televisions and newspapers will all tell of the American-wonder type of achievements of these various office seekers, and why they should be ‘duly’ rewarded by being elected or re-elected as the case may be, for they self- assuredly believe it to be so.

   I have always engaged in a personal war on the proliferation of fake politics in Nigeria, not because I understood the simple fact that much, if not all of what we need to live a quality life in Nigeria can only be guaranteed by the quality of politics we receive but because I now solidly understand that, every upright citizen, no matter the position occupied in society, as a matter of natural logic, has a duty imposed on him/her to see that the lives of people around him/her are positively touched in the least manner possible. For the reward that awaits can only be the most handsome reward.

                 ARIKOR COLLINS……..   

MUCH I CARE ABOUT SOMETHING

It is the oldest known logic in human history-Cause and effect. Action and reaction. True to type, Reuben Abati was on hand to rescue his Boss. It wouldnt be surprising should Mr. Abati tell us the President travelled alone to America, his words no longer hold meaning to me. The man now wears a thin veneer of responsibility to me. He could turn white to black in the twinkle of an eye.           
A senior official in the Bangladesh foreign ministry had this to say about the 165-man delegation his prime minister took to the 68th UN General Assembly: "There is no justification of such a huge delegation spending huge hard-earned money of poor people by way of comfortable air travels and staying in luxurious hotels because only a few officials from the Prime Minister's office...have the engagement with the UN". This is indeed a great lesson to be learnt at no cost whatsoever, but our own President would rather ignore the statistics available to him.Certainly, I couldnt help but feel sorry for the Bangladeshi official, but he needed to have come from my country to know what it feels like "spending huge hard-earned money of poor people". He is even crying over a paltry 165-man entourage, whereas my own President felt the whole Government should be at the UN. The twinges of disquiet didnt readily creep in until much later because from the look of things, we are obviously on the path to doom. Which sane country would not try to salvage its dwindling educational environment, how little however? Except my President is trying to tell me his entourage-equalling a small village, is entirely made up of uneducated men and women, himself inclusive.           
And so when I saw the amiable D.G of Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC), Arunma Otteh, smiling and nodding like an Agama lizard besides the President, while the latter was being interviewed, I didnt need the explanations of the self-acclaimed image maker, Mr.Abati. The action said much, not the least of which was: "Nigeria is the safest heaven on earth. Nigerian Universities are the best universities in the world. Nigerian Youths are more technologically advanced than their western counterparts. There are quadrillion jobs waiting for the over 500,000 graduates. Nigeria is indeed over-flowing with milk and honey."

Written by Arikor Collins.

TIME TO LASSO A WILD HORSE.

Before embarking on this task, I had dedicated a great deal of attention to ongoing happenings which might have rendered my efforts worthless, but everywhere around me was over-filled with encouraging signs.   
Nigeria, as most often is the case seems to be a land of absurdities. From Spartan State legislators to lascivious National legislators-whose licentious libidos could not be curtailed. From a National budget not passed six months into the fiscal year-because some selfish interests have not been met to the Government spending millions daily on refreshments. The political landscape is awash with them and the country seems to be thriving in them (absurdities, I mean). Little wonder then a writer gave it a befitting sobriquet, ‘A land of unusual precedents’. One absurdity has been gradually rearing its ugly head and sending out grisly warnings which have constantly been ignored. After the not-so-long political conundrum in Rivers State, the President’s wife took to different media to register her disapproval. But while condemning the upheaval, made such remarks as "This office", "it is our position" etc. It struck with awe how far our President's wife had gone in her ravenous bid for power, same with a random wife whose husband had managed to get himself into a little political position. A close look at the ongoing constitutional amendments never at any point provided for the "First-Lady syndrome" which is spreading like    harmattan wildfire amongst wives of political office holders. But, the stark nature of the situation had hit me with a thrusting force-This is Naija-a land where everything goes.
It seems that Madame is garnering enough clout for her Darling husband's second term bid, and in the process doesn't mind whose toes are stepped on (even the constitutions'). She seems to be at the limelight of her husband's administration, taking delight in making grandiose trips abroad at the slightest instance, that one couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't the one we voted for in the first instance.
Ironically, the greater part of the blame should be apportioned to us. We had watched in our usual nonchalant attitude the progression from a tenuous trait to a repugnant character. From Maryam Babangidas' glamour and lavishness in a country bedevilled by mortuaries for hospitals, death-traps for roads and stones for bread, to Maryam Abachas' display of grandeur and opulence with taxpayers hard-earned monies. Then followed Stella Obasanjos' acts of personal aggrandizements.
My only fear and rightfully as such remains: is that should the status quo not be checked, the next President's wife might be a combination of all these traits mentioned herein, and only then, in our usual manner of crying over spilt milk, would we realize that the situation has crossed over from a handshake to a chest shake.

This article was written by Arikor Collins.

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