Christmas, the radiant star and the Great Comet (5)

• Published date: 02 February 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

In the Spirit Age in which humanity now lives, there will be no hiding places for any of us. Almost effortlessly, our neighbours will see through us and we, too, will see through them as we all see ourselves in mirrors.Whatever is false about us and about them, which one party is trying to hide from the other, will be forced out into the open from their hiding places. It will not matter if these attributes of the soul previously lay dormant or seemingly lay lifeless deep within us, and we did not know they existed. Already, we are lit up or fired up, without associating what is going on in a larger quantum and incredible velocity to the penetrating powers of The Great Comet. Tarry a little… and reflect on how men are now raping women all over Nigeria. We have heard of how men in their 70s rape girls of about 10 years. We say it is madness. The men say it is the devil. Last year, we heard of a Lagos government bus driver who raped and killed his last passenger on a late night bus. She was 22 and a virgin. Last year, we heard of a night duty security man who raped a nurse on duty with him at a Lagos clinic. Last week, arm robbers invaded the women's hostel of a university and raped 10 of the students. In its Valentine's Day article last year, this column reported the cases of four Lagos teenagers who would drop out of school. One was pregnant for her father. They lived in a single room tenancy in Lagos. He did not marry her mother. In the single-room tenancy with them were his wife and three children. This victim of her father's defilement three months ago had a baby boy, a carbon copy of his grandfather and father . Not too long ago, we heard the news of an electrician who was invited home by a single mother to fix an electrical fault. He ended up raping her under- aged daughter. What about the motor-cyclist in Ondo State who raped his pregnant client in a bush? She was a trader who periodically went to sell her wares at a big market some kilometres from home. He often took her to the market and back home. One day on the way back home, he diverted from the road, pretending to want to ease his bladder. She disembarked, and he stood the motor cycle. Then, sprightly and violently, he pounced on her, raped her, and after, as she struggled to figure out what had just happened to her, he started the machine and rode off, hardly remembering she could easily identify him.

Several such cases nation-wide, many of them unreported, show that, sexually, many men are under pressure nowadays and cannot control themselves when they find themselves alone with women. Women, too, are no less sexually depraved. The dressing of many today is terribly suggestive and their bodies have become cheap game. Around an uncompleted building in a housing estate I heard of, groups of young school boys and girls gather in the evenings. You'd think it is an innocent gathering of young ones who had escaped from boredom at home. They take turns to enter the building to do whatever they are there for on a cartons-covered floor while their mates keep the watch for them. The same goes on in a reputable boarding school nearby. Wherever you turn, it is evident something is firing a weakness in men and women, boys and girls, old and young, against which they cannot hold themselves.

So wide spread is rape in...