A very serious matter that goes without saying in our country today concerns the absurdly frequent modes of operation of armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers that underline the tragic failure or ineffectiveness of our security organizations. If the authority the government at whatever level has over citizens does not extend to outlaws and criminals called armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers (and other deadly criminals) it goes without saying that all those at the helm of our political and social affairs especially at the federal or central level of governance have failed us big time. And this cannot but mean that our political persons at the helm have no business being where they are now. That armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers at all times and events find their respective practices conducive, laudable and lucrative clearly indicates how we have been confined to a state of bondage by lawless men who have converted their perceived physical strength to brutal means of terror which their weapons of force fortify their weak courage with.
Whether or not you go with me, armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers are shameless men, shameless cowards whose primitive, muscular courage and strength lie in the arms in their hands. Their possession of arms, of dreadful arms, enervates their law of force and all notions of their worst crimes against humanity. Anyone who unfortunately has had the awful, dreadful and provocative experience of encountering armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers, directly or indirectly, cannot but know and understand the meaning, the true meaning, of a wicked experience of human nature. Those who unluckily did not survive their direct encounters with the cruel men went to their deaths and graves with tortured mental pictures that their killers inflicted on them. Those who luckily survived their direct encounters with the evil men everlastingly remember the tortured mental pictures that hence forwards govern their feelings about our country. Those who indirectly experienced the horrifying experiences of armed robbery, rape and kidnap, through the encounters of their loved ones, friends and family members with the monsters called armed robbers, rapists and kidnappers are not in any way better than the living dead.
Those of us who are not victims or have never been victims of the men we abhor vehemently pray every now and then never ever to encounter them. Fervently we pray to always be lucky in our day by day engagements that never should let us encounter them or be encountered by them. We follow up our prayers with the strongest condemnation of our leaders who seem helpless about the ostensible state of things in our polity where the laws of outlaws and their rule cannot be brought to an end. Why should those who seek positions seek them when they know too well that they do not have what it takes to perform successfully on the positions? Our political leaders can only improve our moral sentiments of who they are as our political leaders by wiping out the identified worst of crimes, “deserving the most cruel chastisement which human beings could inflict,” to quote John Stuart Mill (1806-73), English philosopher and economist.
Now, of the three horrifying crimes of armed robbery, rape and kidnapping, which one in our eyes should we have the notions of moral, social and democratic obligations to resist and deliver ourselves from as a union of persons who cherish the power of the law of modern civilization? Simply, I must answer thus: each one, each of the crimes, is as dreadful as the other. This is a statement that should compel us to question why there is no equitable apportionment of punishment based on the grounds of equal justice to those who are respectively guilty of the crimes of armed robbery, rape and kidnapping in our clime. Armed robbers are usually condemned to death after they are tried and found guilty in accordance with our extant laws relating to the crime.
But rapists are not condemned to death even though their crime is as horrendous as that of armed robbers. In fact, the rapist forcefully and brutally uses his phallus to rob the weaker sex of her dignity. In some cases, a rapist uses his phallus to crack a little girl’s or young or advanced lady’s virgin safe for ritual purposes. No act can be more horrible, more baleful and more brutal than a rapist’s crack of doom. Yet how many rapists are subjected to the penalty of death that they surely deserve? The rapist’s mode of operation is not in any way different from that of an armed robber. We are all familiar with the recent crack of doom a one hundred level University of Benin student of Microbiology was given in, of all places, God’s sanctuary of The Redeemed Christian Church of God. Oh God! What has become of our country? We were all incensed by the resounding blow(s) the poor maiden received from her killers after doing to her what they did to her.
Indeed Miss Uwaila Vera Omozuwa’s rape and death that stank beyond here to the other side of the divide have rightly pricked the conscience of our national parliament to the extent that the true nature of the punishment to be invented for rapists is now being given serious legal consideration by creators of our laws. I won’t beat about the bush. Rapists deserve death. Our national parliamentarians should so pronounce and so enact the law to be applicable everywhere in the land accordingly. Our parliamentarians should stop being merry-andrews in parliament and do their duty wholly under the authority of fair-minded men and women that they must be, or that they must be induced to be, and with due regard for public concerns. And the death penalty that befits armed robbers and rapists also befits kidnappers, who by whatever degrees are no less dastardly in their acts and considerations that deny us our happiness and well-being as Nigerians.
If our parliamentarians are reading this column now, they should kindly accept it as my memorandum, officially or unofficially, to them on the matter of the type of punishment that rapists and kidnappers are bound to be given henceforth. It is iron that slices iron. And it is criminal justice for iron to slice iron. And nobody should argue and insist that our society of oppressive and unequal men and women is responsible for the terrible postures and mannerisms of the inhuman criminals in our midst.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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