Citizen Misbahu Salisu and his murdered baby girl

THE story sounds too bizarre to be real, but a 28-year-old man, Misbahu Salisu, is in custody for allegedly taking his own daughter’s life penultimate week because, as he reasoned, she wasn’t the right sex. According to reports, Salisu, a resident of Doka Baici in Tofa Local Government Area of Kano State, allegedly poisoned his day-old baby girl to death because he preferred a male child. He was arrested by the Kano State Hisbah Board whose Deputy Commander, General, Operations, Dr Mujahid Aminudeen, revealed that he gave the baby a local insect killer. Corroborating that claim, Salihu said that he drugged his wife, Sa’adatu Musbahu, in order to perpetrate the dastardly act unhindered. He said: “I prefer a male child, but my wife gave birth to a female, which prompted me to end the baby’s life. After she put to bed, I bought a poison called Fiya-Fiya and put it inside tea. I fed the baby and she died. When I was buying the poison, I also bought a sleeping pill. I used it for the mother who fell asleep while I was feeding the baby with the poisoned tea.”

This is, to be sure, a horrendous, extremely distressing story. That the father of a newborn who ought, together with his family members, to be rejoicing at the bestowal of a precious gift on his family chose to end her life on account of a fact of birth over which she had no choice or power whatsoever, is too chilling to even think of. We are tempted to ask the suspect, who will soon have his day in court, whether he has his longed-for son now that he is in police custody, charged with murder. Will his wife, whom he charged, incredulously, with failing to give him a boy, and upon whom he has inflicted everlasting emotional and psychological damage, now be well positioned to gift him a boy? Salisu, like many lowlifes in this land, acted as if women are biologically wired to determine what sex their baby should be, and as if they owe their husbands a bounden duty to give birth to male children. Surely, Salisu must know that the baby girl he just killed is the product of a joint act with his wife, and he got the exact result of that act.

We ask again: was it the fault of the baby girl that she was born a girl and not a boy and what could she have done to reverse the situation? How could an innocent baby have been treated to such a cruel fate by her own father? Was Salisu in his right senses with this his evil act of peremptorily and flagrantly snuffing life out of an innocent girl because of his crazy obsession with male children? Is Salisu saying that it was the duty of his wife to give him a male child? If someone had poisoned his own mother to death on account of her sex at birth, would she have given birth to him? Indeed, did Salisu realise that by despising baby girls, he was indirectly railing at the birth of his own mother, without which he would not have existed in the first place? And, pray, was he suggesting that the birth of his sisters, if he had any, was a mistake?

Besides, is there any sense in the persisting and pervasive cultural preference for boys in the country? Just how do people want to have these boys/males without females to undertake the business of pregnancy and giving birth? Would boys be able to reproduce themselves if there were only boys in the society? Who would now give birth to the needed females if everybody wanted only boys/males? There has to be careful and deliberate reorientation away from the unnecessary and undue obsession with baby boys in order to have a healthy society. Nigerians must come to the realisation that what will profit all is real care for all children, both girls and boys, in order to have them grow into responsible adults who would be the pride of their parents and the entire society.

The idea of men not wanting female children becomes doubly ridiculous when such men go and pick females as wives for the purpose of having children. Where would their so-called wives come from if other parents did not accept having baby girls? The government has to make an example of Salisu by ensuring that he is maximally punished according to the law for his evil act in order to dissuade Nigerians from embarking on such deadly acts for the flimsy and crazy idea of having mainly, if not only, baby boys. It is time the society jettisoned the obsession with male children; every child deserves to be treasured.