by Femi Fani-Kayode

…Every single member of the Nigerian Senate that voted with Yerima on that day and that supported his filthy agenda should bow their heads in utter shame and they should be compelled to offer their own infant and under age daughters to strangers for marriage.

The Nigerian Senate includes some of the brightest minds in our country many of whom  are friends of mine and most of whom have been in active politics for many years. They have my respect. However what transpired in the Senate chamber a few days ago was a great cause for concern for not just me but millions of Nigerians from all over the world. How an innocent and seemingly uninteresting, uninspiring and unimportant debate about when and at what age a Nigerian citizen could legitimately and lawfully renounce his or her citizenship turned into a referendum on paedophilia and child marriage I dont know. Yet sadly that is precisely what happened and ever since then the nation has been on fire.

Senator (ex-Governor) Ahmed Sani, the Yerima Bakura and the Apostle of political sharia in Nigeria finally got his way and the futile attempt by a small number of good, noble and honourable Senators to amend the existing law on marriage and properly define the age of a female that is eligible to marry was thwarted by the pro-paedophilia, pro-child rape and pro-child marriage group within the Senate. Sadly our distinguished Senators eventually bowed to the will of Yerima and his friends and agreed to remain silent about the age that young girls can get married in Nigeria. What this means is that girls that are as young as 9 years old can continue to be lawfully bedded and married in our country providing they are deemed as being ”physically developed enough” to do so by their suitors, their prospective husbands and their parents. That is the law and that is the sordid level that we as a people and as a nation have degenerated to over the years.

I weep for Nigeria and, perhaps more appropriately, I weep for the Nigerian girl child. I weep because it is obvious to me that the Yerima’s of this world wish to turn our country into a giant Bangkok to which millions of sexual deviants flock from all over the world to ”enjoy” our ”tourist attractions” and ”have a taste” of our young and beloved children. Worst still they wish to use religion to defend and justify it. Yet we have no choice but to live with this new reality and to accept it as it is. After all, our representatives in the sacred halls of the Senate were not sensitive enough or ”man enough” to shoot down the whole thing, to stand firmly against the unholy agenda and to say boldly and firmly that ”come what may” our children must be protected from sexual deviants and reprobates.

And since the Senate, in its infinite wisdom, has now bought into and openly
endorsed the “Paedophile Charter” which essentially makes it lawful and
constitutional for very young girls to get married and to have sex at a very young age it is my firm view that we have now become a nation of perverts and paedophiles. The Senate had a chance to clear the air and amend the law but, out of nothing but sentiment and an inexplicable eagerness to compromise with that which is clearly evil, they threw that chance away and sacrificed our most sacred values to Yerima and his gang. Worst still they did it with a smile on their faces. Every Nigerian should bow his or her head in shame because instead of crushing the head of the lustful beast that seeks to fornicate with our children, to steal their virtues and to destroy their future what the Senate did the other day was to compromise with and cater for the filthy appetites and godless fantasies of a bunch of child molestors and sexual predators. It is sordid. It is ungodly. It is evil. And it is unforgiveable.

Surely we ought to be seeking to protect our children and not seeking to bed them. Yet it appears that not everyone shares our outrage and collective sense of shame. One Uche Ezechukwu made the following contribution which went viral on the social media networks and which I think speaks volumes. He wrote – “Those who are railing against ‘paedophile’ senators, like Yerima Bakura, must be told that a Muslim can’t go wrong while imitating the examples of the Apostle of Allah himself and the founder of his religion, in the same way a Christian cannot be criticized for following the examples of Jesus Christ. The Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) married Aisha at the age of six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. So, why are we judging Muslims by our own standards?”

I am appalled by these words. The truth is that I have never heard such a
self-serving and specious argument in defence of the philosophies and beliefs of
the Ayatollah of Bakura, Senator Ahmed Sani, the practising paedophile who married and bedded a 12 year old Egyptian girl, as this one. Ahmed Sani himself could not have argued it better. Yet I think that it is an utter shame. And this is more so because the individual that is putting the argument is supposedly a Christian. The Old Testament of the Holy Bible prescribe ”stoning” for adultery but that does not mean that Christian countries, or indeed secular states like Nigeria, should stone adulterers.

Neither does it mean that we should preserve the institution of slavery or crucify petty thieves simply because the Holy Bible endorsed both practices in the Old Testament. We must accept the fact that the interpretation of Biblical and Koranic provisions are evolutionary and are ever changing. Jesus Himself said ”laws are made for man and not man for laws”. The suggestion that paedophilia has any place in any modern and decent society simply because it was once practised in the distant past is not only a despicable argument but it also does not make any sense. After all cannibalism and child and human sacrifice were once widely practised and were held as being perfectly acceptable throughout the world as well but that does not mean that we should practice any of those terrible vices today.

The young man, Uche Ezechukwu, who appears to be defending child rape in the name of Islam, should either let someone lay with and ”marry” his own 6 or 9 year old daughter or he should seal his lips forever and stop trying to defend the indefensible. His assertions, and I daresay those of Senator Ahmed Sani and anyone that shares their primitive views, are not only utterly immoral and reprehensible but they are also intellectually dishonest. I say this because the truth is that there is NO Muslim country in the world that has adopted the “paedophile charter” where 6 or 9-year-olds can marry and be bedded except for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen.

Every other Muslim country in the world, including Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Jordan, Senegal, the Sudan, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Qatar, Bahrain, Dagestan, Albania, Bosnia, Somalia, Algeria, Libya, Mali, Azerbejhan, Niger, Turkestan, Chechnya and Syria have specifically banned child marriage, paedophilia and child rape in their various constitutions and laws and some have declared it ”repugnant”, ”unacceptable” and ”un-Islamic”. Are these people not Muslims too? As a matte of fact are they not better Muslims than those that insist on sleeping with or marrying underage girls in the name of Islam?

Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is a noble, pure, honourable and ancient faith that seeks to protect the weakest and most vulnerable in society, including children. No-one should use the misinterpretation of its provisions to try to justify or rationalise what is essentially depraved, shameful, disgusting and barbaric behaviour and the most sordid and filthy expression of sexual deviance and perversion. Even animals do not marry or bed their own infants. The bitter truth is that paedophiles have no place in any civilised society.

I am constrained to say that in the light of their “yes” vote to child marriage and
their green light to paedophilia, every single member of the Nigerian Senate that voted with Yerima on that day and that supported his filthy agenda should bow their heads in utter shame and they should be compelled to offer their own infant and under age daughters to strangers for marriage. I repeat, they have turned us into a nation of perverts and paedophiles and I say a pox on all their houses. I reserve my commendations and respect only for those Senators that opposed and voted against Yerima’s protestations and agenda and that stood for that which was right even though they could not muster enough votes to have their way. My word to this brave and righteous few is simple and clear- keep the struggle alive and continue to resist the evil that resides amongst us all. You are the only thing that stands between our children and the practising paedophiles in our midst who seek to ravage and bed them even before they have entered their teens.

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Femi Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Aviation.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.