No, not another girl!

Acquaintances call me an extremist, colleagues tag me an unapologetic feminist and some detractors, as no mortal would exist sans them; spit the phrase ‘sardonic chauvinist’ on my protruded behind. Ironically, none of those tags have been significant enough to cause any deceleration on my cruise against any form of injustice doled on the female homosapien.
As a matter of fact, I wear them as a soldier wears an insignia, strutting about with defiant pride and making my case for women across the globe in whatever capacity that I can but what justice can the dead get?
In futility I tried for the umpteenth time to wrestle the tide of salt water rising steadily in my cornea. Alas, I was, like Napoleon at Waterloo, defeated. I gave way for a rush of tepid tears as the barricade broke and simultaneously, the gift of clairvoyance, perched on my shoulders.
In my trance, I was shown the life that 14-year-old Obiamaka Orakwe, if not suddenly taken by the hand of death via a gruesome act, may have lived. Like every other girl her age, Obiamaka would have completed secondary school and proceeded to the University of her choice to equip herself for a better life. If she had chosen science, she may have probably screamed once or twice at dissection practicals and gagged a little from the stench of chloroform. If she had studied arts, she would have had long prose and poem keep her awake all night but ultimately, like every average undergraduate in a Nigerian Federal university, she would have jostled for seat in an overcrowded classroom, skipped meals to meet class and took a quick shower at dawn when the bathroom became the similitude of a pigsty.
She would have made friends from both sexes and at some point; she may have even fallen in love. She would have graduated, wore the very revered convocation gown and taken several ‘selfies’ with her mother, friends, family and maybe the boy that stole her heart. Then, she would have embarked on the voyage to wherever NYSC took her to obey the mandatory clarion call. She would have come visiting her mother, wearing her low quality ‘Khaki’, crested vest and may be the NYSC jungle boot after passing out of the three weeks compulsory camp. Her mother would have called her ‘corper’, her siblings would have teased her with ‘otondo’. Maybe she would have got a job immediately, gone back to school for a post graduate degree or married the love of her life. Whatever the case, her mother, would have got the chance to watch her walk down the aisle on the happiest day of her life. It would have taken some years after that event but her dear mother, would have got the opportunity to go for ‘Omugwo’ in whatever city she and her hubby chose to live in. Obiamaka would have experienced the most indescribable feeling on earth, motherhood…the unquantifiable joy of birthing another human being but none of these beautiful things will happen to Obiamaka as she was raped to death by some miscreants in her parent’s home last week.
In one report, the barbarians were said to have gagged her and taken turns at ravaging the young girl till gore flowed through her like a fountain and death rocked her to sleep. However, in another report, the circumstances of her death were different. Series of contradicting reports saturate the media but it doesn’t make light the enormity of this act against humanity.
Poor Mrs Orakwe, the horror, anguish, pain, devastation and frustration of a mother whose child gets ripped out of her bosom can be better imagined not experienced. How does any mother come to terms with the reality that a child, which was carried for nine months, birthed amidst exacerbating pains and nurtured with grave discomfort, simply disappeared into thin air?
Obiamaka’s last words to her mother, according to one of the several contradictory reports were “it was those boys I told you about…” Though in a later report, her father had asserted that there was no such thing and her body was found in the morning. Be that as it may,
On an ominous day, fiends broke into her parents house, after probably smoking tons of Indian hemp and ended the life of a promising girl.
What incomprehensible horror? What has become of this nation and where is sanity? What happened to communal living, kindred spirit that a home would be broken into at broad day light, or at night as later claimed by Mr Orakwe, a young girl raped to death and no one could do something!
The female gender in Nigeria is fast becoming like the lowly suricate in the deepest of jungles without protection. Obiamaka is gone but the perpetrators still run loose, smoking hemp and strategizing their next hit. No arrests were made, no one was apprehended! Like every other time a rape crime is committed, the police has said efforts are on to arrest the people responsible and findings will be made public but how many people have been tried and convicted in this nation for rape?
A few weeks ago, Justice John Adeyeye of an Ado Ekiti high court sentenced 19-year-old Adeolu Bamiteko to death by hanging for armed robbery and also slammed another 10 year jail term on the convict for the possession of unlawful possession of firearms. I am yet to find any rapist who has been condemned so! Yet, rape, in any of its form, is to me, a more grievous offence.
Till today, women across Nigeria are yet agitating for the death penalty for rape. Some people argue that death penalty is extreme but raping a minor to death isn’t? In February, the Lagos State Chapter of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), called on the Federal and state governments to pass death penalty for rape. There certainly must have been a reason for that outcry and I must posit that every woman, in whatever capacity, should do the same. I charge the lawmakers, women in government, medicine, military…please give your voice, resources, expertise and let us collectively mitigate, if not eradicate this scourge of rage.
According to section 358 of the Criminal Code, life imprisonment is prescribed as the punishment for rape but how many rapists face it? “We may all have come from different ships, but we’re in the same boat now,” a great activist once said. Last week it was Obiamaka, we all have daughters, nieces, sisters, aunts, wives…so we are in this together! Should more girls be raped to death? “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” let not that day come.