OPINION: That girl-child of a nobody

EVEN Jezebel at the height of her imperial terrorism could not have visited such unspeakable evil on a child-male or female-as happened in Anambra state recently. Jezebel was a Phoenician [today’s Lebanon] princess and also the daughter of a king. But she and her father were servants and worshipers of the other gods. The evils of Jezebel which included her promotion of idolatry; persecutions of the prophets of the Living God; manipulation and control of many people including her otherwise good-natured husband, Ahab, king of Israel; and, jealousy and murder were fully and graphically recorded in the Bible Books of Kings l & ll.

The notoriety of Jezebel was such that the editorsof Encyclopaedia Britannica made several entries and descriptions about her. In one entry they wrote that ‘Jezebel has come to be known as an archetype of the wicked woman. ‘According to the Bible [Kings l and ll]’, they wrote, ‘she provoked conflict that weakened Israel for decades by interfering with the exclusive worship of the Hebrew [God] Yahweh, disregarding the rights of the common man, and defying the great prophets Elijah and Elisha’. Jezebel crowned her capacity for evil by orchestrating the murder of Naboth for the sole purpose of expropriating his ancestral vineyard which he refused to sell in obedience to Jewish tradition, and bequeathing same to her husband King Ahab. Jezebel had been dead for centuries. But long live Jezebel. She died a miserable and cruel death which she deserved, anyway. The Bible recorded that she was thrown out of her bedroom window, trampled upon by horses, her blood and flesh licked and eaten by dogs.

In Anambrastate last week, a 21stCentury Jezebel manifested in blood and flesh. A video was widely circulated depicting a woman’s inhumanity to a girl-child. The woman like the Biblical Jezebel was also the wife of a reportedly good-natured man, and a mother. In fact the gruesome video of her evil of using a very red hot pressing iron to skin a girl who was said to be her maid was spiced with the picture of the woman and her childrenlooking grand and resplendent. The graphics of this modern day Jezebel turning a helpless and hapless maid into an ironing board would churn the stomach of any viewer, no matter how hard-hearted the viewer might be. No part of this girl’s tender body was spared. Her eyes were ironed. Her face was diligently pressed with the hot iron. The skins on her buttocks were taken out and l can imagine that they got stuck on the iron. Her breasts were pressed ostensibly with a single-minded desire to make them vanish. Her laps were burnt at many points with such mindless recklessness. The girl’s private part was so burnt that a viewer was left with no other conclusion than that the perpetrator’s intention could have been the desire to seal up her vagina. The Good Book says that the heart of a [wo]man is desperately evil and difficult to comprehend. But the video of the traumatization of that abused girl-child in Anambra state went way overboard. It was inconceivable that a mother who had carried pregnancy to term, three times, suckled babies and who was reported to be breastfeeding at the moment could do such an evil. Stripped of the gripping and compelling video evidence, we will attempt to transcribe the story about the incident as narrated by a woman who claimed that she was the person who facilitated the procurement of the maid for the mean woman. ‘The world should hear me out. This

shows what was done to my sister’s child l facilitated to work as a maid for my friend. She used a hot iron to skin her alive. She used a kitchen knife to carve her vagina. Right now we are in hospital and the woman who did this to my sister’s child believes that we can do nothing to her. She even boasted that she is a lawyer and that she could kill the entire family of the brutalized girl and nothing would happento her. l am begging for people to help us. This is the reward for doing good to a fellow woman. She even used pestle in her attempt to cripple her, believing that the hot iron and carving knife had not done sufficient damage to the girl. In addition, she rubbedground pepper into her private part, muzzled her and imprisoned her in the toilet. l did this video to appeal to the Igbo nation, my Enugu state people and people of good conscience everywhere to come to our aid’.

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The victim was reported to be 11 years old and the incident was said to have happened in Onitsha though another report claimed it happened in Amawbia, near Awka, the state capital. It was heartwarming to read that the state government has intervened with Mrs. Nonye Soludo, wife of the governor, promptly visiting with the child in hospital and assuring that her non-governmental organization, Healthy Living With Nonye Soludo would collaborate with the ministry of health to ensure adequate and efficient treatment of the minor. The government said the bill would be on the state. But this is about the only good gesture by the Anambra state government that’s in the public domain. Other things that we read in the public space on the handling of this atrocity have been poor, disappointing and depressing. For instance, last week Tuesday, there was a public document purporting to be an update on this child’s case.

It bore the name of one Kingsley Obi [Anambra State Principal] for Save and Secure the Child Initiative, The Campaign Against Child Abuse in Nigeria. It made difficult reading so we will just reproduce it here. It read: ‘Yesterday at our meeting we decided; 1. Both the husband and the culprit will sign an undertaking with us, to wit, that they won’t take in any underagehouse help. 2. That in lieu of court processes against her, considering that we have agreed to take into cognizance the fact that she is breastfeeding, and that none of her family members is in support of her, but are grateful to us, that she should open a fixed deposit of N2million with the victim as the beneficiary, which she shall access on turning 18. Failing to do this we shall start her prosecution.

Eventually we settled for the sum of N500,000. By next week Saturday we shall effect it. We eventually had a meeting with the DPO [Divisional Police Officer] to have these ratified. 3. The husband also accepted to train the victim henceforth to the university. So by next week Saturday [Feb. 10] we shall meet again to sign the undertaking and have the evidence of the fixed deposit ‘Our National Legal Advicer [sic], Barrister SYZ Orlando adviced [sic] that whatever agreement must be done in the law court. But after much deliberation during our yesterday’s meeting, we settled with the above position, while keeping the later as an alternative means of action. In addition to this, we handed over to the mother of the victim the sum of N30,000 as our contribution for her upkeep. Thereafter, we officially handed over the victim to the mother’.

This settlement is difficult to believe except it is a confirmation of the culprit’s alleged boast that nothing would happen to her. Truly she is getting away with murder. Where is the culprit? Probably at home not sitting in jail awaiting trial. The excuse about being a nursing mother is nauseating. A court of law should be allowed to determine how to treat her case. What is N500,000 compared to the physical injuries and the trauma that this child may have to live with for the rest of her life? Where is the guarantee that the man would sponsor the education of the victim from now and up to the university level? What if the man suddenly dies? Any woman who can inflict this level of bodily injury to a child can cause the premature death of her husband. The way and manner this matter is being handled will only embolden those-men and women-who are inclined to violate the rights of a child. By the way, there is a Child Rights Actwhich was enacted by the National Assembly about 20 years ago and which has enough provisions on how to deal with matters of this nature. We will be surprised if this law has not been domesticated in Anambra state. If it has been, then why is it not being applied here? If we really care about children, it is only imperative that an example be made with this identified child abuser. Let this wicked woman have her day in court.

AUTHOR:UGO ONUOHA

Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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