By Jide Ajani

In 2014, Nigeria’s Senate did the unthinkable. The Senator Sani Yerima-propelled shooting down of an amendment to parts of Section 29 of the 1999 Constitution, regarding  renunciation of citizenship, sent a dangerous signal which suggested that some members of the Senate want to further endanger the girl-child in an environment that had been made unsafe by socio-economic and security challenges.

Freed Ese Oruru at Police Headquarters, Abuja, yesterday.

Specifically, it had to do with the non-passage of the amendment proposal to Section 29(4)b.  The Section deals with the renunciation of citizenship.  It provides that for a Nigerian to renounce the country’s citizenship, he or she should not be less than 18 years of age or be an adult.

Section 29(4)b then goes ahead to state that to be an adult, the person must be married.

The primary implication of that Sub-section relates to the fact that those girl-children who are under the age of 18years, but who have had the magnified misfortune of being forced into marriages across the country, would also qualify to be described as adults – because they are married.

This was the vote that was being taken and which the Senate was almost amending with a view to removing the ‘B’ part of sub-section 4, when the former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani Yerimna, worked himself into a frenzy.

On the floor of the Senate, he objected to the removal of the clause and also went a step further by piling so much pressure on some of his colleagues not to allow the amendment to pass.

Interestingly, by the time the vote was called, the Senate could not muster the required 73votes to allow the amendment to sail through.

And so, Nigeria’s Senate, by implication, told the world that any married girl-child can be categorised as an adult – irrespective of the age.

Had the amendment sailed through, the direct import would have been that those who relish abusing the girl-child via marriage would no longer have any excuse under the Constitution. How Yerima was able to swing the process of voting in his favour remains to be explained. One of the direct implications of this act is what has played out in the Ese-Oruru saga.

When leaders endorse a particular way of life while hiding under religion and culture, they stockpile wood for the bonfire of behavioral recklessness.

For those who do not know where to locate the origins of the endorsement of the sick, very sick act of peadophilia, which overwhelmed Yunusa Dahiru Bala, the alleged abductor of Ese, from Bayelsa State, they need look no further than a section of the elite in northern Nigeria that does not yet see anything unbecoming in taking underaged girls for wife.  To claim that this perverted way of life, this evil desire, is not rampant in the North is to claim that the naira can hold its own against the dollar.

The very thought of whatever Yunusa may have been doing to or did with Ese in the innermost recesses of his village in Kano offends the sensibilities. Yet, Yunusa had parents. The village had a  head. And there was an Emir in Kano. Whereas the Emir of Kano was said to have intervened last September, it needs clarifying that tokenism carries no weight in the face of a determined dangerous mentality and, therefore, the Emir should have followed up his intervention.  After all, the village head, members of the Sharia Council and the Emir are themselves parents who, naturally, would not want any harm to come upon their wards, how much more their children. Yet, in all of these, the seeming complicity of the police in Kano needs to be thoroughly unearthed.

Unashamedly, guerilla arguments are being introduced to muddy the waters. Some people are now attempting to claim that Yunusa is an 18year-old – a claim which would make an Amaju Pinnick qualify to play for Nigeria’s U-17.

Because Nigeria is a country where opinion is cheapest in the world, and where good sense is trampled upon, we celebrate the intended idiocy the unintelligent bring into the public sphere when they attempt to rationalize an otherwise clear case of infringement and violation and rape of innocence.

Between Laila St. Matthew-Daniel and Madam Ankio Briggs, there  is a consensus that all those complicit must face the law – no matter their position in society.  In this instance, it takes an evil mind to act out this evil; and worse still, to act as if it is normal, or even celebrate it, is nothing but a rape on the innocence of the girl-child.