Senate and consensual sex bill

And so it happened that the Seventh Senate in its last sitting last Thursday passed 46 bills which had earlier been sent in by the House of Representatives. Everyone, at the time, seemed to be talking only about the short time in which the bills were passed without focusing on what was exactly passed.

While I must, of course, applaud the Senate for passing the bill which will put rapists behind bars for life and will also give 10 years imprisonment for child pornography and incest, I must also condemn the reduction of the legal age of consent to sex from age 18 to age 11.

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We are Africans, Nigerians to be precise, with deep moral values. A rude awakening of a child’s sexual life at 11 and passage of a bill to legalise such are suggestive of the moral decadence eating deep into our society which suggests that there is a reduction from the high values once placed on sex to something that can now just happen, even amongst children.

The Senate is trying to tell us that if we see two children probably aged between 11 and 12 necking at each other, we do not have a right to stop them, that a school does not have the right to question a 14-year-old if she is caught with a boy of the same age or older doing it, as far as she gave her consent and that if by chance the school decides to suspend her, we have every moral right to sue the school , and pat the girl on the back for a job well done.

The implications of the passage of this bill do far more harm than good as this will not just lead to confusion in the nearest future, but will also lead to several acts of human rights violation. Children and teenagers who will now be legally married at age 11 will be statistically invincible as children. Of course, it will give credence to the sickening traditions that allow provision for child marriage. These children do not marry of their own accord, as spouses are forced down their throat with a majority of the victims being females having dreams and life ambitions. I am reminded of when I was only 11 and how I was just trying to adapt to the gradual changes my body was undergoing and what exactly my mind was preoccupied with, busy with school, having no time for any other thing aside from my books and of course a nice game with my friends when I could. I can however imagine if at that age, I was told that I was going to marry somebody, somewhere, somehow. Believe me, I would have run away from home without thinking twice.

Aside from the fact that there are health implications to child sex on the female side, what with the ever increasing incidence of Vesico Vagina Fistula in the northern part of the country and increased chances of cervical cancer if sex is not delayed until after 18, what does an 11-year-old really know about sex that they should be given the right to choose if they want to have sex or not? If only our society had not been turned upside down as it were, with values of people reducing as the day goes by, and the social media playing a very huge role in this, we shouldn’t be discussing sex in children who barely make decisions on what to eat, let alone know their left from their right.

In as much as we preach that there should be sexual education, and a lot of it, we should be guided as to the kind of sexual education we give our precious children. We should be wise about whose footsteps we follow. In South Africa, for instance, where the consensual age for sex is 12, we all know that at least one in three people have HIV/AIDS even with all the campaigns on preventive strategies. A word, they say, is enough, in this case, for Nigerians.