Rape: Beyond Castration

Recently, Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State was reported to have assented to a bill amending the state’s Penal Court Law No. 5 of 2017 which now includes castration as punishment for persons found guilty of committing rape.
Before this amendment, Kaduna State penal code provided for 21 years jail term for rape of an adult and life imprisonment in the case of a child.
The latest amendment is said to have come two months after El-Rufai advocated a stronger penalty for rape convicts, lamenting that such felons often rape more persons after serving their prison terms.
According to him, “In addition to life imprisonment or 21 years imprisonment, anyone convicted of rape will have his organ surgically removed so that even after he finishes his term, he will not be able to rape anyone again.
“So long as the tool exists, there is the likelihood that he may go back to do it again. Most of the perpetrators are young people, so even after 21 years, they can come back and continue.”
The governor also hinted that the state would expunge the provision for bail conditions for rape convicts.
It would be recalled that the two chambers of the National Assembly had, in early June, rejected moves to adopt castration as punishment for rape convicts.
Two days after the Senate threw out a motion advocating such amendment, House of Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, had asked to know what would happen to an adult female who raped a younger male, before subjecting the motion to a voice vote. It was defeated even as the federal lawmakers called for the application of more stringent penalties against any perpetrators.
Contributors to the motion had earlier cited weak institutions, poor enforcement, poverty and unacceptable social practices as some of the reasons that have promoted sexual violence against women.
Kaduna is certainly not the only state that is inclined to pursuing such extreme penalty for rapists. In neighbouring Kano State, the legislature had also unanimously adopted to alter the state’s Penal Code amendment (No. 12) Law of 2014 to provide for castration as punishment for rape offenders. The current penalty is 14 years.
Given the rising cases of rape in the society and the brutality with which the offence is increasingly being committed, The Tide welcomes any legally acceptable move that would serve to keep perpetrators in check.
This is why we think that the bold step taken by Governor el-Rufai and the Kaduna State House of Assembly is worthy of emulation.
Considering the timing of the motion, there is no doubt that the latest efforts were galvernised by the mass condemnation which followed recent, almost daily reports of the murder of some women across the country after they were raped.
Particularly outrageous was the reported rape and murder of a 23-year old female undergraduate student of the University of Benin, Miss Vera Omozuwa, where she had gone to read inside a church in Edo State, on May 13.
Not quite long after that incident, a Science Laboratory Technology (SLT) female student at the Federal College of Animal Health in Ibadan was reportedly attacked, raped and stabbed to death by unknown assailants.
Here in Rivers State, there was a recent case where people panicked as a suspected sex predator was reported to have gone from one hotel to the other raping and strangling young women, mainly hotel stewards. This strange occurrence had forced the government to insist that hoteliers mount 24-hour close-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance around their premises.
Even as The Tide commends the Kaduna initiative, we, however, wish to caution that rape cases should be thoroughly and exhaustively investigated so as to avoid a miscarriage of justice in which an innocent person is made to suffer an irreversible medical procedure.
In the case of an adult female who rapes a younger person, some commentators have suggested the removal of her fallopian tube. But we doubt if this procedure can temper the wild urge to copulate as would vasectomy in men. Furthermore, it beats us as to the possible penalty for a marriage partner who is accused of rape by the spouse.
In any case, while there may not be a comprehensive antidote to rape as yet, we think that what Kaduna State has just initiated marks a good example for the rest of the nation.