Independent panel should probe accused policeman, says Director, Action Health

The Co-founder and Director of Action Health Incorporated, Dr Uwemedimo Esiet, in this interview with UTHMAN SALAMI, links the recent allegation of rape against a police officer in Lagos State to the systemic low value that permeates all institutions in Nigeria

There was a report of a police officer who allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl inside a police station in Lagos. What’s your reaction to this?

What played out was the power, influence, inequality, and vulnerability of the survivor of sexual abuse. But in this case, the person in the police force is a man; he’s an authority figure; he has financial resources and social status. All these layers of power were against this survivor, whose rights had been violated.

All these have also been cases where sexual abuse has been recorded. It has nothing particularly to do with his job as a policeman. It has to do with his person, character, motive, his poor understanding of the dynamics of society, and his penchant for unethical practices.

It is not necessarily a function of the fact that he is a policeman or officer; it is the fact that, if it is true that he committed the offence, he is a person of a depraved mind who is not fit to be in the midst of the people. And such a person should be on the sexual offenders register. We should see sexual abuse in the totality of its prevention.

Since the incident occurred, some Nigerians have raised concerns that this issue might be swept under the rug by the police, especially since it involves one of them. What will be your message to the police hierarchy?

I will respond by saying that no system on its own can be fully accountable to itself. It is therefore incumbent for the police service commission, the Ministry of Police Affairs, the Office of the Inspector General of Police, the National Human Rights Commission, the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, and civil society organisations to form an independent accountability body within the Nigeria Police Force to get involved in this matter.

It is like looking at yourself in the mirror. You can only see yourself. But if you allow a human mirror, which is not yourself, to look at you, issues are brought out. Because the police system has been there for years, it needs reinventing and renewal. This is the moment.

This issue should become a watershed. The police should look at itself again. The IG can institute an administrative review, but this on its own cannot fully address the issues.  We must seek police and human rights reforms in Nigeria.

Do you think the police as an institution should be probed to fish out more offenders?

The police are not on trial. This is still an allegation. It has to be proven. The last part is very critical, which is that every public institution should be audited for us to know how compliant and level of understanding is around the issues of sexual abuse and practices. This is a gross violation of human rights. When you talk about human rights violations, it is not only the police, presumably, that violate human rights.

Human rights violations are very prevalent. We need to begin to address them. And do people even know their rights? Do they defend their rights? This is because human rights are not served à la carte. Is there anyone consciously educating us about our rights? Are there institutions where we can take our complaints when we suspect that our rights have been violated? They do not necessarily have to be government-run. They will just interface on behalf of those who have been allegedly abused.

We always make it look as if solutions are that simple. Socialisation in itself is a challenge. A young man who grows up where the rights of women and children are continuously violated and abused will think that is the norm when he reaches a certain age. We need a transformative social agenda to help our nation.

This incident is a reflection of the low status and situation of our community, state, and country as a whole. This is because the perpetrators are not from abroad. They are among us.

How best will you suggest the survivor be quickly rehabilitated?

The first thing is that she should be examined through medical and psychosocial management. Psychosocial management is a lifetime engagement. People have been raped and then ended up committing suicide. This is because they felt worthless as a result of the traumatic experience.

Some have had to change schools, some have had to stop going to school, and some have gone ahead and developed mental illnesses on a long-term basis. So you cannot have a one-size-fits-all strategy. We should deal with each case as the situation demands. It takes some people two to three years to heal; others may not recover from it for a lifetime. This is why we have always emphasised that beyond medical treatment, there should be psychosocial support.

There seems to be a surge in cases of sexual-related crimes throughout the country. What do you think is responsible for this?

I think the first thing is that there’s a greater awareness; reporting has improved. Reporting by those who have been sexually assaulted has increased, and even when they don’t want to report, community members and anybody can report. And because of this, there’s also a better response pattern in terms of how the system responds once reports are made.

Also, because of social media, it is easy for people to follow through and insist that justice be done, as against what was obtained in the past. The second thing is that, beyond the reporting, the survivors are now much more aware that there’s a pathway for seeking justice and redress.

Overall, there’s now a better societal consciousness and a better ability for law enforcement agencies, or whichever agencies, depending on the state, to take the pathways so that justice is done. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a greater surge. There’s no benchmark that we can measure all these things.

If we had better documentation, then we can say that in 2012, there used to be just four of these cases happening across the state daily. Now in 2024, we are finding maybe as many as 20 reported cases.

Of course, there are places where this is happening in greater numbers, for instance, where there’s conflict and displacement, whether natural or man-made. The reason is that any time there’s such a thing, what happens is that the most vulnerable suffer severe consequences. And the most vulnerable in any society are women and children. Within the children’s group are female children. So, in those conflict situations where there’s displacement, including natural issues like flooding, fire disasters, earthquakes, and others, women and children suffer because once they don’t have adequate shelter, the risk of being abused becomes higher.

Minors, including male and female children, have been subjected to various degrees of sexual assault. Some parents and teachers have also been arrested for defiling their teenage daughters and students. How can we save our homes and schools from this crime?

There’s a national policy for school safety that we need to ensure is domesticated. I know that Lagos State has school and child protection policies. They also have a school-related gender-based violence prevention programme. This is, however, not domesticated in every state. Even when these states have these policies and programmes, we need to intensify public education and awareness creation.

And beyond these, some people suffered repeated abuses and now take that abuse as the norm. It is not enough to have only policies; it is also important that we educate people and make language policies for people to understand in their various communities, using the most prevalent indigenous languages.

There must be ownership. People must own these policy documents, even though it is the government that will bring them up. People need to follow through the process through which the policy document is formed. People need to know.

In addition, we need to ensure we don’t just know the document but own it by engaging them to understand that these laws or policies are necessary to prevent and mitigate. Preventing here means ensuring that the incidents don’t happen anymore. Mitigating means ensuring that there’s a pathway for recovery and justice for those who have already suffered from it.

The third will be to enlist the support of the media and the law enforcement agents or agencies, as the case may be, to ensure that they prosecute through the legal system and get appropriate reprimands or sanctions against perpetrators.

It is not an easy thing, but it is doable. We just need to continue to be at it. The other part is that we must ensure that we move our society from patriarchy to where both genders enjoy the same privileges, rights, and responsibilities. The almost invisible power structure is always against women. It is worse if the woman is poor, if she’s with disabilities, if she comes from a minority group or has limited socio-economic opportunities. If the odds are against a woman, the lesser her chances to get justice.

We need to teach our new generation from an early age to ensure that boys and girls enjoy the same opportunities. This is very critical. There is a cultural dimension. We need a transformative social re-engineering to ensure that equality and equity become the norm, not what is said to be an aberration.

Do you think the advocacy of castration as well as capital punishment for sex offenders should be considered?

Castration is not the way. We need to strengthen the register to ensure that every sexual offender is documented in a national register of sexual offences. We need to increase public education and enlightenment around this issue to ensure that we enlist any structure in society to understand why it is not acceptable and for everyone to become custodians of the children’s and young people’s rights to life, association, education, and fundamental human rights.

We cannot get justice by permeating injustices. And the only way to guarantee justice is to ensure that the human rights of everyone are upheld, guaranteed, promoted, and assured. This has to be holistic. But definitely, castration is not one of them.

Will you say the government is doing enough to stop the menace in the country?

This (sexual-related crime) is driven by social injustices, inequality, and patriarchy. The government can provide and support a pathway to redressing these, but we, the citizens, must take it upon ourselves that we want a more equitable society.

In a democracy like ours, when we say government, if it’s a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, then the failure of government is a failure of citizens’ participation. If we all participate, we will demand greater accountability for ourselves and those representing us, especially all the structures of government that are meant to ensure our fundamental human rights. Rather than pointing fingers at the government, let’s look more within ourselves. Of course, there are things that the government can do.

If you look at the creative industry, why do people commodify women’s sensitive parts? Why is it that our musicians, especially those who produce contemporary hip-hop songs, show what some will say is indecent engagement with women? There’s no respect for the bodily autonomy of women or their dignity.

The engagement needs to be systematic, sustained, and continuous so that even the most popular ones can take it upon themselves to help sanitise the industry. The same thing goes for Nollywood and all those that are helping around culture. For instance, female genital mutilation is a human rights violation against the bodily integrity of women and girls in sizeable parts of communities. In fact, it happens in every state.

On a global scale, we are number three in the world, depending on how you look at the statistics. But in terms of numbers, we may be occupying the number two position in the world, contributing to the age-long cultural abuse of women. We need to pay more attention to allowing science to drive the path and not speculation to rationalise what we do, even when it is obvious that it is injurious to our women.

What role can parents and society play in tackling sexual-related crimes?

A lot is dependent on the knowledge level of the parents, the power dynamics within their families, and the context of the parents within their families. Sometimes, families feel a lot of shame about exposing these crimes, fearing that everyone will subject the survivor to ridicule.

This could lead to mental health issues. It could lead to stigma and discrimination, even within communities. If, in the future, the survivor wants to have a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, in a society where they will ask the husband to investigate the lady, it becomes a problem.

There’s a whole lot. That’s why they don’t usually mention the names of the survivors in the media, where it is reported, or at the court during proceedings. All these are to ensure that some of these issues are curtailed. We need to have a lot of community engagement and dialogue around this matter and not make it the burden of one.

It should be the burden of all of us to sanitise our communities, ensure that the perpetrators are fished out, get them punished, and also ensure that they don’t come in contact with the survivor again.

We need to maintain a very good national register and tracking mechanism such that when a perpetrator escapes a community, he is easily identified; if he decides to relocate to another community, he’s easily identified and punished. This takes us back to the national identity mechanism of the nation and our ability to sync all the many identities across the country. This is what is obtained in a civilised society.

It is also important that women’s groups and feminist movements don’t soften their pedals against this. Let the media be mindful of the way they report it. Sensationalism around it doesn’t in any way solve the matter. It should not only be about selling newspapers or for social media clicks.

Also, if someone goes to an event and his attention is centred on the revealing body parts of women who showed up for the same event, such a person is already violating the bodily integrity of women. This concept of ‘women are always shy; they will not say yes at first approach, so you need to press on’ is sadly one of the ways of empowering a likely abuser against an innocent woman.

There are many social and cultural dimensions that we need to expunge. When we also propagate religion and keep brandishing the notion that ‘women submit to your husband’, it shouldn’t be presented in such a way that one is seen as a master and another as a slave.

Even in a marital relationship, you should not take it for granted that your partner declines sexual intercourse as a result of tiredness or sickness. We need to engage the clergy, traditional institutions, sociologists, the justice system, the media, and young people if we want to change the patriarchal society and entrench gender equality and social justice in any society. This is what we need to do.