After being alive for a relatively lengthy time I can say that I still have not mastered the human mind because of how spontaneous it is, a lot of actions are performed on the spot but that doesn’t mean that one hasn’t considered performing such actions, today we decide to look at rape because it is a stain on the purity of humanity, granted it had already been tainted but humans have what is called a conscience, when one loses their conscience we see problems manifest like rape or murder. To act in a way that disturbs another person’s peaceful existence is wrong plain and simple.
Trying to justify rape is something that someone out there will try to defend, not necessarily saying it’s right, but rather look for loopholes to make it seem less a problem than it actually is. That needs to stop first because it’s a mindset that puts victims in a box.

I think that to finally curb this habit we need stricter laws that in no way seem lenient to anyone, we need to tag rape and the punishment for it should be life imprisonment whether or not the victim lives or not cause they’ve still been robbed of something, their trust in humanity, some people can regain it but we can’t use them to cover up the others who are still trapped in a shell of fear because of that extreme violation of their privacy and peace of mind, the ones treated as pets because they’re still frozen in fear and therefore can’t do anything for themselves. Someone else will tell me that everyone can mentally heal which is true but we as Nigerians don’t always handle it well, always trying to force things on people and whatnot which may work for some but once again people are wired differently.

Also it’s not been proven but I think it’s the extra sense of value that’s placed on men in the society because according to some there needs to be a level of subservience in females so they can be accepted by men looking for companionship, you raise the male child as a man, tell him he has to be very strong to protect his younger siblings or his future wife and all that but with power comes a sense of responsibility and when someone doesn’t notice that, abuse forms and that’s when we start noticing patterns that we’ve seen in the rapists, the superiority they feel so the assume they can abuse the “power” given to them by nature and society, children are taught to respect their elders and it’s stressed so much but not a lot of people preach respect and understanding for people in the same age group.

With all that I’ve said I left something out to specifically make it a closing and that is human nature, we live by the principle “I want it and will get it at any cost”, we use this principle a lot mostly for things like cars, money, food, electricity, sex, shelter, companionship, entertainment and what have you, but that very simple principle is a coin cause everything that you want has two methods of attaining it, the legal method and the illegal method, a lot of us swear by the legal method while some of us attempt the legal way and break into the illegal method. I guess I’m going off topic here but where I was trying to get to is something in our constitution that allows a certain set of men (and women in all logical fairness) comfortably “lay in bed” in bed with minors, which is the age of consent in this country, our law makers need to review that and not make way for tradition cause its wrong, very very wrong. To the point I made earlier about harsher laws I have an example; If I put a book in an empty room and threw someone into a room and told them that if the book moves at all, a poisonous gas will flow into the room and kill them, they’d avoid it yes?, in some cases it’s true but that same person will still move that book and die knowing they did what they wanted even though they were clearly told the consequences, that’s the same way man acts according to his own accord not being bothered about the consequences because of the sense of control, it may seem small but man doesn’t care because that is man. I gave this example so we don’t try to use logic to understand rape and accept that like man it is fully illogical, I also stated it to point out that no matter how strict the stipulations are man will still act the way man wants even if it leads them to death, so I suggest the tight law for the offenders so we spend less time on their matter and more time on the survivors of the injustice done to them because they’re the important ones in any rape situation, and if indeed the victim doesn’t live to tell the tale then as I and my brothers like to say “Death to rapists”. My final statements are the law should stop favoring offenders and start fully backing the victims, and people should create more room for supporting victims. Thank you for your time, my name is Adeniji Adenrele and I say no to rape.