The culture of silence on rape and the plights of the girl child in the Nigerian society: an encounter with FUOYE and EKSU students

Abstract

The Nigerian society is gradually degenerating into a punitive nightmare for her citizens, especially the girl child. This is because the rate at which rape cases increase on daily basis is alarming, the newspaper headlines is replete with all forms of rape cases against varying degrees of women at all levels/phases. Averagely, virtually 70% of our girls have experienced rape cases/sexual molestation before age twenty, either by their  neighbours, friends, acquaintance, family or in some cases, father. The effect of this is numerous, and the silence of the society, and law enforcement agents is not encouraging, as defaulters get away and hunts for the next victim to quench their uncensored libido. In attempting to check this menace, various organisations have sprang up to fight for justice but their efforts still remains insignificant, compared to the number of victims of rape on daily basis. The study adopts qualitative and quantitative method of data gathering/analysis, by issuing questionnaires to female students of tertiary institution (EKSU & FUOYE) who are between ages 15-30 as well as expansive literatures from books/journals to explicate its findings. At the end of the study, it is discovered that, 80% of the girls have experienced rape cases and couldn’t seek for proper justice due to intimidation, social stigmatisation, circumstances, reputation, threat & parental influence, hence remain silent. The study thus recommends that:
rape defense mechanism should be inculcated into primary and secondary school curriculum, rape cases in Nigerian court should be made free of charge for the girls, value reorientation should be taught across all institutions and social groups, and the legislature should pass the instant death penalty for rape bill into law.

Keywords: Sexual Molestation, Justice, Nigerian society, Rape.