THE EVIL THAT MEN DO - BY OTORKPA JOSEPH OCHE
Hajia Maimuna is a caring mother, a good wife, an excellent
entrepreneur, and a Gold merchant. On the 5th of August few years ago while
travelling to Abuja Nigeria’s capital city, the vehicle she was travelling in
was Blocked by dare devil armed robbers disguised as military men who stripped
her of all she had; money, gold and precious ornaments. This hard working lady
was bruised, battered, raped and dumped by the road side to die.
When Pricillia, a newly recruited banker boarded a tricycle
at the close of work, little did she know that the events that would unfold
over the next four hours would change her life forever. It was about 7:35 pm
when she left the bank after a long day of debiting and crediting accounts,
hopping into the next available tricycle.
Mid way into the ride, other passengers alighted at
different bus stops leaving Pricillia and the driver. The decisive moment came
when the driver on the excuse of avoiding the usually heavy traffic along Douglas
road in Owerri, South East Nigeria, took a detour and ended in an obscure
location where he raped Pricilla at gun
point, took her mobile phones and disappeared into thick darkness.
Few weeks later Pricillia was at the Federal Medical Center
Owerri to complain of the side effects of the drugs she was given as Post
Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for HIV. That was when
the unimaginable happened. As Pricillia walked away from the
pharmacy, she saw a man having a striking resemblance with the fellow who raped
her; he was dropping some relatives who had
come to see a patient at the hospital. As she moved closer,
she could not believe her eyes; she was standing face to face with the man who
took her most priced asset in a cruel and dehumanizing manner. Convinced that
she had the right man, she grabbed his shirt and alerted passersby who gathered
within minutes.
As Pricillia narrated her ordeal the man denied the
accusation insisting he had nothing to do with her predicament and should be
excused, that was when she made a statement that stunned the
crowed. She said, “the man who raped me has a big scar on
his thigh, so if you show these people your thighs and there is no scar I will
apologize and let you go”
At this point, a larger crowd had gathered but the driver
was not willing to pull down his trousers in full glare of the public, until a
policeman showed up. When he pulled down his trousers, a loud noise erupted as
the crowd descended on the man beating him up mercilessly.
The hidden scar had exposed him as the man who raped an
innocent lady on her way back from the office.
Many disciplined and hard working women have innocently
fallen prey to the activities of these hoodlums whose appetite for hard drugs
and rape of innocent girls and women have continued to defy solutions.
Raped at age nine by a relative and pregnant at 14 Oprah
Winfrey, like many others have experienced the wickedness and brutality of our
society. Sadly, it’s an environment where blood lines no longer hold.
Increasingly, the girl child is becoming an endangered specie as pedophiles’
continue to roam free in our societies terrorizing the lives of our children
and stripping them of all the joy and excitement that comes with childhood.
From New Delhi to New York, from Durban to Rio; women and
girls are been hunted down by rapists, abused by pedophiles and emotionally
decapitated by a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to the
womenfolk.
Quote: “we need a deep social revolution that will give more
power
to women, and transform relations between women and men at
all levels
of society. It is only when `women can speak up, and have a
full say in
decisions affecting their lives, that they will be able to
truly protect themselves
and their children-against HIV”
EXCERPT FROM MY BOOK THE UNSEEN TERRORIST
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